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The U.S. regulator of national banks is reviewing how it will penalize so-called "pillar violations" of anti-money laundering laws after the agency revamped its enforcement policies ahead of congressional criticism.
Two recent evaluations of third-party audits conducted on behalf of banks highlights an unresolved question in the compliance world: can you sometimes get what you pay for?
The Internal Revenue Service's anti-money laundering division is in the process of revamping how it examines tens of thousands of money services businesses, according to a former U.S. Treasury Department official.
U.S. regulators Thursday released the latest Bank Secrecy Act examination manual for financial institutions, clarifying regulatory requirements on bulk currency shipments, suspicious activity reporting and compliance department structures.
Small brokerage firms will no longer be exempted from undertaking annual independent testing of anti-money laundering programs following a rule change approved last week by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Cash-strapped banks facing federal mandates to hire outside consultants to improve their compliance programs are increasingly seeking lower bids from anti-money laundering consultants to get the work done cheaply, say compliance professionals.
Federal regulators that uncover anti-money laundering lapses at banks could face an unusual challenge this year: how to penalize an institution that has been propped up with government money.
A federal financial regulator is reviewing the anti-money laundering programs of large, national banks in an effort to establish regulatory benchmarks, say government officials and compliance officers.
Federal banking regulators, besieged by a surge in bank closings, are resorting to re-hiring retired examiners to speed up receiverships and resolve billions in toxic assets, the flotsam of a still unsettled mortgage meltdown.
Compliance officers at smaller financial institutions say that meeting the independent testing requirements of an AML program can be difficult. But current and former regulators say there are ways to keep the entire audit or portions of it in-house, a cost savings, if institutions are creative.
The FDIC, the chief regulator of more than half of U.S. financial institutions, failed to identify violations involving customer identification programs in at least three of 24 financial institutions reviewed, the Office of the Inspector General said in a report Friday.
These transactional reviews, which rely on historical and potentially stale data, have little usefulness for regulators seeking to identify laundering, says New York-based consultant John MacKessy.
Auditors that don't have experience with Bank Secrecy Act rules and regulations can make costly oversights and errors that may lead to enforcement actions or painful demands from examiners down the road, compliance professionals say.
In its 2007 business plan, the FDICs Office of Inspector General said it will increase efforts to investigate fraud at institutions supervised by the agency, develop educational outreach programs and create a database to better track suspicious activity reports.
United Roosevelt Savings Bank and Eurobank, in cease and desist orders issued Tuesday, were instructed to look for transactions that should have triggered currency transaction reports or suspicious activity reports. Both were cited for other deficiencies in their anti-money laundering programs.
A tiny Dover, New Jersey, credit must improve nearly every aspect of its anti-money laundering compliance program and undertake a potentially expensive look-back of the identities of its member base for the past seven years, according to a National Credit Union Administration order released Tuesday.
Four experts in the legal, regulatory, and finance fields offer advice for detecting regulatory trouble with common AML issues.
Banco de la Nación Argentina must correct AML deficiencies at its New York branch, mainly in transaction monitoring.
The IRS will use these first exams, which target 14 insurers of various sizes, to gather information and fine-tune procedures for future audits.
The federal regulator told Commerce Bank/Harrisburg National Association that it must scrutinize its software vendors and consultants more closely for Bank Secrecy Act compliance, a demand that indicates financial institutions can't shirk their responsibilities by outsourcing them.
