Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting today expressed his positive view of banks’ efforts to comply with anti-money laundering regulations. In remarks at an industry conference as reported by Politico, Otting pointed to a decrease in the number of Matters Requiring Attention related to anti-money laundering compliance that the agency has issued recently as a sign that “for the first time in a long time now, the standards are relatively good.”
Otting noted that MRAs related to money laundering and the Bank Secrecy Act “really ballooned up between 2012 and 2017” but that “now, as institutions have been able to demonstrate high-quality programs, those MRAs are now down significantly.”