The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the federal banking agencies today jointly released an FAQ to clarify certain requirements related to suspicious activity reports. The FAQ is part of what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said is a broader effort to address “pain points” for banks with anti-money laundering/countering the financing reporting requirements.
The guidance clarifies regulatory requirements relating to structuring SARs, continuing activity reviews, and a financial institution’s decision not to file a SAR, according to FinCEN. The goal is to ensure “financial institutions are not needlessly expending resources on efforts that do not provide law enforcement and national security agencies with the critical information they need to detect, combat and deter criminal activity.”
Bessent mentioned the FAQ during a community bank conference hosted by the Federal Reserve, adding that FinCEN and bank regulators “are hard at work” on a new rule to define the requirements for an effective AML/CFT program.
“My expectation is that a proposal will recenter supervision where it should be: on the effectiveness of a bank’s AML/CFT program,” Bessent said.
