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OCC Finalizes Authority to Exempt Banks from SAR Reporting Requirements

By Valentina Pasquali

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has formally adopted a plan to encourage financial institutions to flag suspicious transactions by novel and more efficient means. A final rule unveiled Wednesday establishes a framework for the OCC, an independent division of the U.S. Treasury Department that oversees more than 1,000 national banks, to review requests by anti-money laundering staff in the private sector to depart from current standards for filing suspicious activity reports, or SARs, when pioneering more advanced alternatives. Wednesday's reform brings the OCC's exemptive power in line with that of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN,...

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