Has anyone seen more detailed guidance on the recent change mandating that boards of directors, or committees designated by the BOD be notified of SARs filed? The reason for asking the question is that I'm wondering if the "committee" can be made up solely of bank officers if the BOD designates the bank officers as the "committee". If you've seen guidance, I would greatly appreciate letting me know where I can find it. If not, your opinions would also be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

I think the examiners are looking for the Board to be made aware of the SAR filings, and I do not think the Board can designate that responsibility.

Everything I have seen is pointing to Board notification. the amount of information you provide is up to you, but we do not provide the Board with the names or account numbers of customers who we file SAR's on.

We don't provide detailed information to the BOD either. We just let them know when we file a SAR - which is a very rarely.

Page 67 of the new exam manual says specifically, "Banks are required by the SAR regulations of their federal banking agency to notify the board of directors or an appropriate board committee that SARs have been filed." I understand the "appropriate board committee" to mean it doesn't have to go to the entire board, but a committee made up of directors. I submit ours to the entire board in my quarterly compliance report.

Every month we advise the board on how many SAR and CTRs were filed and in general what they covered. No names or account numbers. (It is in their board package)

Reporting to a designated committee is allowed under 208.6(h) Notification to board of directors. The management of a member bank shall promptly notify its board of directors, or a committee thereof, of any report filed pursuant to this section.

In your travels & experiences, have you found quarterly reporting to be considered "prompt"? I'm just wondering out loud if a certain activity continued through a quarter that could have been beneficial for the Board to know of sooner due to input or a decision they could have made,could quarterly reporting come under criticism? I know someone will probably think if the Board needed to know, they would be told sooner, but on a whole, has FinCEN ever given an opinion on reporting to the Board timing? I thought I read an opinion on it, but of course, I can't find it now, so maybe I just dreamed it.

It has been my experience that if the board only meets quarterly, then quarterly is as prompt as you can be. I haven not come across a bank criticized for not being prompter (is that a word?) Happy Holidays!

FinCEN's regulations requiring SAR filing do not require you to report SARs to the board of directors. The SAR filing regulations promulgated by your federal functional regulatory agency do.

"Promptly" is a weasel word rarely found in regulations. I have seen multiple occasions where field examiners have criticized banks saying quarterly reporting of SARs to the board is not considered prompt. The FinCEN Helpline cannot offer you an alternative interpretation because it's not their regulation that requires it.

Frankly, reporting all SAR filings to the board serves no practical purpose at all. On the other hand, some incidents should be reported to the board without regard to SAR filing responsibilities.

I was reporting to the Audit Committee quartely. An auditor recommended we report to the board monthly instead of quarterly since they were cancelling some of the meeting and it would take sometimes six months for them to meet and get the information. I am now reporting monthly to the Board.

I think a bank would have a hard time arguing active and thorough Board oversight of BSA management and activities if the Board is meeting monthly and SARs are being reported quarterly. And I definitely don't think the regulators, at least in this area, are going to consider that 'prompt.'

Thank you all for your input. Since FinCEN does provide guidance related to SARs, I had hoped that one/some of you may have come across something in your reading. When a bank doesn't get BSA right, the Board's collective rear-ends are on the line, so I would hope they would have some interest in what suspected criminal activities are attempted at their bank, to evaluate that processes are adequate, and be knowledgeable enough to determine that they may need to do something differently if circumstances indicated increased risk.

Hope you all have a less carb/tryptophan drowsy induced week!

Regardless of how, when, how much you report, the key is making sure that your SAR reporting is noted in the Board's minutes. We provide SAR summaries and each SAR has it's own case number. The minutes do not need to detail the reason the SAR was filed, they can just reference the SAR number. Our FDIC examiners and internal audit have never criticized us for that.

FinCEN's regulations requiring SAR filing do not require you to report SARs to the board of directors. The SAR filing regulations promulgated by your federal functional regulatory agency do.

FinCEN cannot offer you an alternative interpretation what reporting them to the board "promptly" means because it's not their regulation that requires it.

Our Board meets monthly however I report CTR and SAR filings (numbers only) as part of my quarterly compliance report. We just recently had a compliance exam and were not critizied for this process.