The federal agency charged with collecting and analyzing the reports of suspicious transactions and customers filed by financial institutions only looks at about 20 percent of the more than one million submitted every year, say former FinCEN insiders.
As lawmakers and banking compliance professionals turn their attention to the burgeoning credit crisis, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has issued a dozen Bank Secrecy Act-related enforcement actions, serving to warn institutions not to skimp on their anti-money laundering efforts.
The Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has revised its suspicious activity reporting form with the aim of reducing duplicate filings for individual suspicious transactions.
The quality of suspicious activity reports targeting terrorism is improving as the volume decreases, U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey said.
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