Welcome to the Compliance Cohort. We are a group of compliance professionals working to make compliance easier. Our goal is to take complex compliance concepts and put them in simple terms that apply to the real world. We are glad you have found us and look forward to collaborating in the future.
If you haven't done so already, make sure you sign up for our free membership where you get access to many member-only videos, articles, and other resources.
All in BSA
On June 22, 2022, FinCEN issued a statement to provide clarity to banks on how to apply a risk-based approach to conducting customer due diligence (CDD) on independent Automated Teller Machine (ATM) owners or operators, consistent with the requirements set out in FinCEN’s 2016 CDD Rule. Some independent ATM owners and operators have reported difficulty in obtaining and maintaining access to banking services, which jeopardizes the important financial services they provide, including to persons in underserved markets.
On June 15, 2022, FinCEN issued an advisory to alert financial institutions to the rising trend of elder financial exploitation (EFE). EFE involves the illegal or improper use of an older adult’s funds, property, or assets, and is often perpetrated either through theft or scams. The advisory highlights new EFE typologies and red flags since FinCEN issued its first advisory on the issue in 2011.
On June 3, 2022, FinCEN issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to solicit public comment on questions relating to the implementation of a no-action letter process at FinCEN. A no-action letter is generally understood to be a form of enforcement discretion where an agency states by letter that it will not take an enforcement action against the submitting party for the specific conduct presented to the agency.
In this Compliance Clip, Adam discusses what FinCEN recommends for using as a title for the “filing name” of a Suspicious Activity Report. While most financial institutions probably figured this out over a decade ago, it’s important to make sure you are still following this guidance in your institution.
On May 20, 2022, the SEC announced charges against Wells Fargo Advisors for failing to file at least 34 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) in a timely manner between April 2017 and October 2021. Wells Fargo Advisors, the St. Louis-based broker-dealer, has agreed to pay $7 million to settle the charges.
On May 13, 2022, the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued its 2022 National Strategy for Combatting Terrorist and Other Illicit Financing, which identifies measures to increase transparency in the U.S. financial system and strengthen the AML/CFT framework. The 2022 Strategy addresses the key risks from the 2022 National Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Proliferation Financing risk assessments and reflects the challenges posed by a world impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, the increasing digitization of financial services, and increasing levels of corruption and fraud.
In this Compliance Clip, Adam talks about how the section for politically exposed persons (PEPs) in the BSA Exam Manual was recently updated in December of 2021. While the regulators have said that the BSA Exam manual updates shouldn’t be anything new, the changes to the PEP section of the manual are quite interesting as it seems to back peddle from what was said in the 2014 edition. This video is a must watch for your BSA/AML team.
A Transcript of this video is now available.
FinCEN has updated its “SAR Filings by Industry” webpage to include data from 2021. In addition to this webpage, FinCEN has an interactive map and and Interactive SAR Stats which allow BSA professionals to analyze what types of suspicious activity are being reported in their areas. As this data allows specific sorting of the data, BSA professionals are able to sort by many different fields including primary regulator, county, etc.
On March 17, 2022, FinCEN announced that it has assessed a $140 million civil money penalty against USAA Federal Savings Bank (USAA FSB) for willful violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and its implementing regulations. This is after FinCEN conducted a civil enforcement investigation and determined that grounds exist to impose a Civil Money Penalty against USAA FSB for violations of the BSA. According to the FinCEN’s press release, USAA FSB admitted that it willfully failed to implement and maintain an anti‑money laundering (AML) program that met the minimum requirements of the BSA from at least January 2016 through April 2021.
