Interim Rule - Effective 1/1/02 amends the BSA reg and requires all persons who, in the course of conducting a nonfinancial trade or business, receive more than $10,000 in coin or currency in one trans or two or more related actions to file a report with Treas. Dept. Similar trans are to be reported to both IRS and FinCen. Doesn't the filing of a CTR accomplish reporting to the Treas and FinCen?

Pat, my understanding is that this simply places a CTR requirement on businesses who, up until now, never had to deal with it.

Quite frankly, other than including the words, "Anti-Money Laundering program" in the BSA Policy, I'm not sure what all else we need to do. Most BSA/KYC/SAR/OFAC programs deal with the anti-money laundering aspect already. I suppose as more information on terrorist structuring becomes available, we will need to include that in our training program as well as in policies and procedures.

Bonnie,

Thanks for replying.

Pat Field

I agree with Bonnie. Our Bank Secrecy/Anti Money Laundering Policy has been updated. To complete the "program" the officer in charge of compliance has already been named in this policy and I am preparing the training material (Bank Secrecy as well as Anti-Money Laundering).

Bonnie- I admit I haven't studied this in great detail, but doesn't this "new" requirement simply move the reporting rule from the Internal Revenue code (Section 6050i) to Part 103? There's been a requirement for reports of currency received in a business or trade (Form 8300) for many years.

See next post.

[This message has been edited by William J. Ludwig (edited 02-14-2002).]

From Money Laundering Alert's Web site:

Posted Feb 14, 2002
U.S. trades and businesses must file new IRS/FinCEN Form 8300 for large "cash" receipts

The Patriot Act of October 2001 created a new Section 5331 of the Bank Secrecy Act, which imposes on trades and businesses, including car dealers, jewelers and others, the duty to report cash receipts of more than $10,000 under the BSA.

The Patriot Act, however, did not repeal the tax code provision that requires the same thing. As a result, those businesses must now report the same information under two separate laws.

A new joint IRS/FinCEN Form 8300, released by FinCEN in December, addresses that problem. It is available at www.ustreas.gov/fincen. The old Forms 8300 should be destroyed.

Under the old and new forms the definition of "cash" includes currency and certain monetary instruments of less than $10,000. Banks, on the other hand, must only report currency on their required form, IRS Form 4789, the Currency Transaction Report.
______________________

Form 8300 (Revised Dec. 2001): http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8300.pdf

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Opinions expressed are mine and not those of my employer.

Would you, could you share your updated policy?
bdean@peoplesbk.com

bwest:

I was wondering if you could share your policy on BSA/Anti Money Laundering?
My e-mail is llevins@suburbanonline.org.
This topic was #1 on my list to discuss in our Compliance meeting today.

Thanks,
Lisa

The policy we use is from Pringle (Bankers Systems) so I don't think I can legally share it. If it were something I had written I would be glad to. It just addresses the requirement for ongoing training and addresses high risk transactions, businesses, and countries.

If you haven't already, I would suggest that you look at the Pringle product.

Have you looked at the National Association for Bank Security? They have excellent materials.
http://banksecurity.com/products.html

I looked at the web site of Bankers System/Pringle and they do not list an Anti-Money Laundering policy, they do list the Bank Secrecy Act Policy. Is the Anti-Money Laundering part of their Bank Secrecy?

Until the new Treasury regs on AML programs come out later this month, it appears the regulatory agencies are taking the position that the AML program requirement in the PATRIOT Act is similar to what is already required under BSA. See my answer to this Guru question: http://www.bankersonline.com/security/gurus_sec040102b.html

Yes, part of the Bank Secrecy Policy

Our OCC Examiner recommended that we have a separate AML policy, where we outline specific steps we are doing to identify suspicious transactions.

I also attended a seminar by Professional Bank Services, and they recommended the same thing.

Tired Banker - I empathise with you - Good Grief! A SEPARATE Anti-Money Laundering Policy from the BSA Policy that has already covered money laundering because of the SAR regulations? Yep - nothing like reinventing the wheel to see if it will roll any differently.

Talk about repeated redundancies.

Lisa,

I was wondering if you ever found a BSA/AML policy? I am looking for one as well.

Thanks,
R Cooke

Not sure if you have seen this yet, but an AML Policy has been posted in the Banker Tools section.
http://www.bankersonline.com/tools/tools_ppp.html

We completed our OCC exam last week and our examiner concurred that our existing BSA policy and procedure appears to be sufficient at this time. I will, of course, continue to monitor regulatory updates and enhance the policies and procedures as needed. I am currently in the process of revising our compliance manual to reference BSA Officer as BSA/AML Officer and including a new procedure to periodically review customer relationships over $1 million. We already have procedures in place for including AML training with our BSA trianing and for reviewing high risk relationships such as MSBs and check cashers. (The examiners, by the way, focused on our account review process. It was one of their top priorities.)

It's official! As those of you who subscribe to the email Compliance Briefings know (since we just sent out a folow-up email around 5:00 pm central), the Treasury is NOT going to promulgate new AML program regulations for banks, thrifts and credit unions. See our article for more details.

I am rewriting a very outdated BSA policy, Can anyone help with the policies that need to be in it. I am printing everyting I can now I need to get it orginized. ANYONE.. Help!!