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Proposed FinCEN Changes to SAR Format a Mixed Bag for Banks
By Brian Monroe
printA U.S. Treasury Department proposal to amend suspicious activity reporting forms could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in one-off expenses for some financial institutions, even as the plan streamlines report filing. The Oct. 15 proposal by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) would add pull-down window data fields to a new XML-based, "dynamic" suspicious activity report (SAR) form. The changes, which come as part of the bureau's IT modernization initiative, would not impose any new regulatory duties on financial institutions. Financial institutions of all sizes would incur training costs, and large financial institutions that batch file SARs via their...
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