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#38152 - 10/22/02 12:03 AM information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
Anonymous
Unregistered

Today I received a message from FinCen section 314(a) system will become oprational on November 4, 2002 and in order to receive optinum results from the community the points of contact list requires updating. this is new to me is there anyone out there that has more infomation on this or what steps i need to take.

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#38153 - 10/22/02 12:43 AM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
Princess Romeo Offline

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Check with your BSA Officer. It seems that FinCEN sent the e-mail to executive officers in banks who do not understand what this is about.

If you ARE the BSA Officer, I suggest you contact your regulator right away!

IMHO, the most logical candidate for the "contact" person should be your BSA Officer or the person who handles Suspicious Activity Reporting for your bank.

Here is the short version of what this is about from the FRB summary of the USA PATRIOT Act:

Government and Financial Institution Information Sharing (Act section 314)
Effective Date: Regulations to be issued by February 23, 2002

Treasury must issue regulations to encourage further cooperation among financial institutions, regulatory authorities, and law enforcement, for the purpose of sharing information about persons and entities engaged in or suspected of terrorist acts or money laundering activities. The regulations may require financial institutions to designate points of contact for information sharing and account monitoring, and to establish procedures for protecting information.



If you want to read the more detailed version of what this is about, you can go to USA PATRIOT Act
and scroll down to page 37 of the .pdf document.
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#38154 - 10/22/02 02:37 AM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
cbinder63 Offline

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It appears that the point of contact person should be the one doing the majority of the BSA and AML work. BTW is anyone registering for information sharing between banks?
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#38155 - 10/22/02 10:56 AM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
Anonymous
Unregistered

When I was at the Bankers' Hotline Security Officers Workshop in mid-September, David Gilles from FinCEN told me that about 1,000 financial institutions had already filed their certification of intent to share. (Now, the requirement has been modified and only a notice -- not a certification -- is required.) That seemed like a substantial number to me.

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#38156 - 10/22/02 12:17 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
I Wear Many Hats Offline
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We have registered because, quite frankly, we felt we would be more conspicuous by our absence....

Opinions are mine and mine alone
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#38157 - 10/22/02 02:03 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
Angel Eyes Offline
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OK, I have spoken to our BSA officer and the person in charge of filing our suspicious activity reports and neither one of them has any clue what is going on here. We never recieved an e-mail on October 2, and we have no idea what contact information they want from us.

RANT WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I guess this is just another example of the messes regulators can make! Maybe they should send along some sort of instructions and additional information on what the heck this is about and what needs to be done. Lord knows I have nothing better to do today than run through red tape
figuring this out! AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH

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#38158 - 10/22/02 02:13 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
Anonymous
Unregistered

OK, Jennifer, I am in the same boat as you. I received the 314a email message today. Nobody here knows anything about an Oct. 2 message. This message came with absolutely no instructions. So, all of you gurus out there, what are we supposed to do now?

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#38159 - 10/22/02 02:47 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
banksconsultus Offline
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banksconsultus
Joined: May 2002
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Los Angeles, California
Go to 31CFR Part 103, Page 23(e) Designation of contact person. "FinCEN may request a financial institution to identify one person to receive requests for information from FinCEN pursuant to paragraph (b) of this section. When requested by FinCEN, a financial institution shall provide to FinCEN the name, title, mailing address, e-mail address, telephone number, and facsimile number of such person, and other information as FinCEN may request, in such manner as FinCEN shall specify".

314(a)relates to information sharing with federal law enforcement agencies, 314(b) relates to information sharing between financial institutions. The latter requires certification of intent, which can be done on-line at the FinCEN website.314(b) as far as I know is not required at this time.

Sounds like your FinCEN e-mail was in search of compliance with 314(a)

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#38160 - 10/22/02 04:46 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
Princess Romeo Offline

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American Banker had an article, and after reading it, I am not sure if the October 2nd notification was a specialized e-mail that was sent, or simply the general notication about the PACS system for electronically filing CTR's and SAR's.

Does FinCEN intend to use the individuals designated as the PACS users as the "point of contact", or is this a separate issue?

If FinCEN wants to send a list of "bad people" for us to check our records, that request would go a particular person.

If, instead, FinCEN wants to communicate with someone about a CTR or SAR that we filed, that request would go to another person.

If FinCEN's intent is both of the above, then we will need "multiple" contact points depending on what they are asking.

I dunno, do these other agencies think that banks have a "cookie-cutter" organizational system?
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CRCM,CAMS
Regulations are a poor substitute for ethics.
Just sayin'

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#38161 - 10/22/02 05:49 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
RVFlyboy Offline
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Bonnie, I understand your situation with having different people responsible for different activities under BSA and USAPA. But I think FinCEN is saying there should be one person in the bank that can make the distinction you describe and channel the FinCEN request to the right person(s) in your organization to handle it. They are not requesting the names of the people that will be handling each request, but who is the one person in your organization that they can communicate with that will know where to channel the request so that it can be properly handled. In most cases, that's probably going to be the BSA Officer. While banks don't have cookie-cutter organization charts, most institutions should not have a problem designating a single individual as the traffic cop for all FinCEN requests.
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#38162 - 10/22/02 05:53 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
Anonymous
Unregistered

Jim,

I agree with your explanation. FinCEN should be able to contact one person and expect that the information will be routed to the appropriate person.

I was a little perplexed by the message that I received yesterday. I will respond again and provide the information they are looking for. They could have provided some instructions!

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#38163 - 10/22/02 07:14 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
Princess Romeo Offline

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Actually, I responded with some questions asking for clarification. If they need a traffic director for information, that's one thing. But if the main focus will be on a certain area, then that should go to the person in that area or we will wind up with a "bucket brigade" of information handling.

Why does that remind me of a scene from a Marx Brothers movie?
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Regulations are a poor substitute for ethics.
Just sayin'

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#38164 - 10/22/02 08:12 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
Tina A Sweet Offline
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Marysville, Ca.
It seems this issue with the "second test" has hit all of us. I did not receive the first one either. I tried to call them to say "What happen to the first one?" I have been trying to call all day, but no answer. It looks as if the first one was never sent. So what do we do now?
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#38165 - 10/22/02 09:45 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
Anonymous
Unregistered

I asked my compliance examiner about it (since they are in the building doing a complicance exam...OTS). He said that they got the same email, but since it doesn't apply to them, they were not going to respond. He said he didn't know for sure what FinCEN wanted, but to just send them the name, address, phone number and email address of a contact person. So, that is what I did. Guess who that was!! You'r right! Me, the humble Compliance Officer. Nobody else would volunteer.

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#38166 - 10/22/02 10:57 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
Andy_Z Offline
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Rant ahead: I think it is apparent that regulators, contacting banks via mass e-mail is not the best of solutions to a problem. This is the Control List II. When they get one single person, what happens when that person gets hit by the proverbial bus or gets downsized? They need to factor in some redundancy (required) and vacation/absence management.

The regulators should recommend to banks to set up optional accounts for just this purpose. They should decide to use push or pull procedures like we do e-statements. We send it to you, or tell you to come and get it. But when we get something out of the blue that says where can we contact you, we tend to provide what we have now, not knowing what we'll need later.

We need to learn from some of this too, so that we build in redundancy and absence management backups. We need an e-mail address to a position more than a person or IT to set all mail to a departed employee to be forwarded to another employee and not returned.
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#38167 - 10/23/02 12:17 AM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
Princess Romeo Offline

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Andy - thank you, you're rant addressed the point I didn't quite get to in my "bucket-brigade" analogy.

I LIKE the idea of setting up a Department e-mail address. I will forward that suggestion around here.
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CRCM,CAMS
Regulations are a poor substitute for ethics.
Just sayin'

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#38168 - 10/23/02 11:59 AM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
teresa Offline
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teresa
Joined: May 2002
Posts: 91
Maryland
I did receive both messages, actually two of the same thing on Oct. 2nd. I deleted them because I could not identify anything about the sender and was trying to prevent the spread of viruses. Both the from and subject line simply said "Sys314(a)" and contained a file attachment titled "test". The second message sent added USA Patriot Act to the subject line - enough that I could recognize what it was talking about. Now, maybe I'm not being a good compliance officer when I don't immediately think of the USA Patriot Act when I see 314(a), but there's a lot of information that passes through here in a day.

I did take a minute to explain to them why I did not respond to the first message. It look suspicous so I did not open it. Perhaps that is why other banks did not get it.

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#38169 - 10/23/02 04:42 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
Princess Romeo Offline

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You know - you really have to wonder WHAT some of the folks are thinking when they send these things out. The entire Control List debacle is a prime example.
_________________________
CRCM,CAMS
Regulations are a poor substitute for ethics.
Just sayin'

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#38170 - 10/23/02 04:47 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
Lestie G Offline

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I got notification via snail mail. It's a two page letter with an attachment, explaining the whole process. It doesn't reference any previous information. It's also on US Treasury/FINCEN letterhead. I haven't seen an email at all. I wonder why the difference?
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#38171 - 10/23/02 04:57 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
BrendaC Offline
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Sweet Home AL
I assumed (and you know what trouble you can get in when you do THAT), that the reference to the "second request" was the follow up to the first request we received about signing up on OCC's BankNet (see OCC Alert 2002-11 http://www.occ.treas.gov/ftp/alert/2002-11.doc). It states that they will use FBI Control list contacts if the bank does not designate someone else. We also have to list emergency contact personnel in our call report beginning 9/30/02.

In looking back at FinCEN's Web Site, I see now that it is the information sharing provision between institutions. http://www.ustreas.gov/fincen/fi_infoappb.html

Can someone pass me a scorecard...I can't keep up!
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#38172 - 10/23/02 04:58 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
BrendaC Offline
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I wonder if I got the email because I am the Control List point person? Are you the designated FBI Control List contact at your bank?
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#38173 - 10/23/02 05:06 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
Lestie G Offline

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I'm not - I passed that little responsibility on to the COO. I checked with him, though, and he didn't get any emails. The letter is addressed to Chief Compliance Officer, and it was sent to each of our legal entities (holding companies, bank charters).
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#38174 - 10/23/02 06:28 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
rlcarey Online
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OK - somebody has to chime in on the side of the government agencies here. While I would be the first to agree that their method of communication could improve, you have to realize that the last figure I saw on the number of financial institutions in the US numbered around 21,000. It cannot be an easy task to figure out how to get information to all of them in a timely manner and in some cases, not really wanting all of the information readily available on the street. So, be patient, provide constructive criticism, and feel sorry for the poor civil servant charged with the task to "make this work". We've all been there, done that.
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#38175 - 10/23/02 06:44 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
Anonymous
Unregistered

After reading one of the posters messages, I realized that I too probably deleted the first message because of the topic line and not knowing the sender. We have "rules" regarding e-mails where we don't recognize the sender. After being inconvenienced in the past by some of these viruses, we have learned our lesson.

Anyway, whoever is leading this program at their end really needs to think this process through a little better. Too many loopholes that will ultimately cause problems.


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#38176 - 10/23/02 08:19 PM Re: information sharing FinCen 314 (a)
BrendaC Offline
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Sweet Home AL
Don't get me wrong...I'm not trying to beat up on the poor civil servant (I have been that poor civil servant in a prior life). I am just trying to identify the common thread in the receipt of the email notices. If it is not the FBI Control List contacts, FinCEN obviously used another contact method. I can't imagine what it would have been though.
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