Mailbag? Questions from the Industry

Mailbag ? Questions from the Industry

In an effort to respond to feedback received concerning various issues of the SAR Activity Review, the new .Mailbag. section has been added. Below are some of the questions received from the industry:

(Q) Can FinCEN provide more information on the .Other. Violation category?

(A) Not efficiently. Until better analytical tools are developed, analysis of the SARs where the filer has checked the .Other. violation category would require the retrieval and manual review of each of those 40,000 SARs filed since April 1996. The narrative section for each of those SARs would need to be reviewed manually to identify any notable commonalities or discernable trends.

(Q) Can you provide information on voluntary SAR filings?

(A) Yes. As a result of this question and other inquiries from the filing industries, FinCEN conducted a study to determine the number of SARs filed voluntarily. Those results were provided in the June 2001 SAR Activity Review and updated in Section 2 of this issue.

(Q) Can FinCEN provide trend analysis based on geographic areas?

(A) Yes. FinCEN recently created a Geographic Threat Assessment Section (GTAS) that is responsible for identifying trends and patterns based on geographic parameters. Future issues of the SAR Activity Review will include items identified by the GTAS.

(Q) Are these publications available on your website?

(A) Yes. FinCEN maintains all issues of the SAR Activity Review on our website at www.fincen.gov

(Q) Since some sections are useful training tools, how can we download the relevant sections to email to our employees?

(A) It is recommended that you highlight the relevant sections, copy and paste to a word document and then email to your employees.

Excerpted from SAR Activity Review Issue 3, page 49