Short of abiding by the Community Reinvestment Act and other prohibitions against discriminatory lending, banks still have the right to choose who they'll do business with. While that seems like an obvious statement, it gets drowned out in the debate about "de-risking."
In every longstanding relationship, there comes a point when both parties begin to question something they once thought they had agreed on. Talk to a Bank Secrecy Act officer at a conference, over dinner or in a bar and one point of friction with federal regulators inevitably becomes clear.
An intergovernmental group said Wednesday that it was considering asking countries to make tax evasion a predicate crime of money laundering and to issue tougher AML standards on political figures.
Since 2008, federal financial regulators have increasingly quizzed compliance staff about such scenarios in an effort to determine how banks are distinguishing their low-, moderate- and high-risk clients, according to bank officials.
An influential financial crime watchdog group released Thursday a much-anticipated list of nearly 30 countries with anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing deficiencies.
The U.K.'s chief financial services regulator fined a London-based insurance firm nearly $8 million for poor controls of overseas payments sent to the Middle East, eastern Europe and Asia.
Brian Mannion, of the Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, spoke with reporter Larissa Bernardes about the possibility of insurance companies receiving enforcement actions, the compliance differences between banks and insurance products and the challenge of independent agent training.
Insurers filed 642 suspicious activity reports between May 2, 2006, and May 1, 2007, the first year they were required to do so, the U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said in a report issued Tuesday.
The U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued a rule confirming that precious metals dealers and insurance companies are required to maintain anti-money laundering programs.
To meet certain reporting requirements, banks serving as agents to insurance and mutual fund companies often must identify those firms' customers initiating the underlying transactions. That is no easy task, say compliance professionals.
The growing secondary market for life insurance policies remains a largely overlooked means for money launderers to place money in U.S. banks.
Insurers were on pace to file 280 for the year ended this month, according to a FinCEN study issued last week. That compares with 5,723 SARs submitted by money services businesses in 2002, and 4,267 by securities and futures dealers in 2003, the first years those industries had to file the reports.
Bob Walsh, v.p. of anti-money laundering compliance for AXA Financial, says insurance companies uncertain about their Bank Secrecy Act responsibilities face a number of challenges related to the newness of the requirements and the fact the industry has old systems in place to help them comply.
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 U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network describes several scenarios in its proposed rule for "anti-money laundering" programs for certain insurance companies.