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OCC Orders Pennsylvania Bank to Scrutinize Vendors for BSA Compliance
By Brian Monroe
printA federal regulator told a Pennsylvania bank 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. The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in a written agreement ordered Commerce Bank/Harrisburg National Association to upgrade its anti-money laundering program with risk-scoring practices, enhanced suspicious activity identification and reporting procedures and improved staff training polices. The bank also must conduct a look-back, or review, of all wire and cash transactions since Jan. 1, 2006 to search for...
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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.
AML-related enforcement actions issued by the OCC have more than halved since 2005, from 32 actions in 2005 to 12 during the first three quarters of 2007, as the number of terminated actions have more than double in the same period, Dan Stipano, the agency's deputy chief counsel, said.
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.
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.
Account history reviews are often expensive but their lengths can be negotiated, according to KPMG Forensic principal Darren Donovan.
Banco de la Nación Argentina must correct AML deficiencies at its New York branch, mainly in transaction monitoring.
The Federal Reserve and New York State Banking Department entered into a written agreement with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. on Wednesday ordering its New York branch to improve Bank Secrecy Act compliance deficiencies a month after another Japanese bank was cited for risk management deficiencies.
The Federal Reserve Board and the New York State Banking Department on Thursday ordered the New York branch of a Pakistani bank to improve its enhanced due diligence procedures.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the New York State Banking Department reprimanded the Bank of Tokyo's Mitsubishi UFJ Trust Company on Monday for "unsafe and unsound" practices in its New York branch.