VIDEO: What is BSA
In this Compliance Clip (video), Adam gives a short but sweet explanation of what the BSA or Bank Secrecy Act is and its role in preventing and detecting money laundering activities.
For more in depth training about BSA, we have a bunch of those available in our store. For BSA, we have our BSA Basics, BSA Bootcamp, BSA Annual Update, and BSA Training for the Board of Directors.
Video Transcript
The following is a transcript of this video.
This Compliance Clip is going to answer the question “What is BSA?”
BSA is something that we have to deal with in financial institutions, whether you're in a bank, credit union, or sometimes not even a bank or credit union, there are other industries that have to deal with BSA and have BSA policies. So what is BSA?
BSA is the acronym that stands for the Bank Secrecy Act. The Bank Secrecy Act along with some other laws like the USA PATRIOT Act and a number of other laws and amendments over the years are what the United States uses as the anti-money laundering laws. Each country in the world has its own anti-money laundering laws. So we have to understand what is anti-money laundering.
Money laundering is really the process of taking illegal or illicit funds, somehow conducting a transaction in a way that gives the funds an appearance of being legitimate. Basically you take dirty laundry, you wash it, and it has the appearance of being clean. When you do that with money, it's called money laundering. So the Bank Secrecy Act is the law that is designed to prevent and detect money laundering and other suspicious activity. Specifically, the Bank Secrecy Act also is looking to counter terrorist-financing, and counter other money laundering activities like suspicious activity. That's what BSA stands for. It's the anti-money laundering rules in the United States.
That's all I have for this short Compliance Clip. If you're new to the compliance cohort, we have a bunch of free short training videos, just like this as part of our basic membership. Our basic membership is absolutely free. You can sign up at compliancecohort.com. If you're an existing member, we thank you for being a member and sticking around. You are the reason we do what we do, and if you want more enhanced training programs, we have a bunch of those available in our store. For BSA, we have our BSA Basics, BSA Bootcamp, BSA Annual Update, BSA Training for the Board of Directors, a lot of different ones in our store, at compliancecohort.com/store.
That's it for this Compliance Clip.