The OCC is due here in the next 60 days and during a conversation with them in November, they said they will be looking closely at our POA accounts. I looked in the FFIEC Exam Manual for some help on what to expect but there is really nothing expanded on how to prepare for this.

We perform CIP and monitoring on all signers, POAs included, so I wanted to see what everyone else does for these type of accounts.

The examiner said they are looking at these accounts due to the possibility of them being used for illegal activity, but isn't that what the whole BSA program is about? Why are they zooming in on POA's now? What has changed recently that they are the new focus?

I guess I needed to vent and see if anyone else has heard that this is the new "high risk" customer for the year. Last year we were hit because of "beneficial ownership" so does this go hand in hand with that?

Are you certain the OCC referred to accounts with authorized signers under powers of attorney? Or did they perhaps refer to accounts of attorneys (lawyers and law firms)? The latter would seem to make more sense, and they have always been considered higher risk for money laundering.

They may in fact be looking at those. I have several banks that have a lot of POA accounts that involve U.S. Persons that have power of attorney over NRA accounts. Many of the NRAs have returned to their home country and the POAs deal a lot of cash through these account. And the reason for that is??????

I think it depends on the specific circumstances.

And that demonstrates that you CAN teach an old dog (like me) new tricks! Thanks, Randy. That puts the OCC's concern into a context that makes sense.

I agree with Carey. We have several incidents recently where people attempted to open accounts with a POA, and they were rejected. One was a NRA that attempted to open an account, but we declined because of the lack of proper documentation. A few days later, somebody came in wanting to open an account using a POA. The CSR just happened to recognize the name, and of all things, the person that first attempted to open the account came along and sat in the lobby. We declined that one. In another case, a customer attempted to obtain a second mortgage using a POA. Unfortunately, the customer presenting the POA has an account with us, and somebody thought the signature on the POA looked funny, so they checked the customer. The signature on the POA matched the signature in the customer file even though the signature on the POA was supposed to be his elderly father's signature. We did a SAR on that one. We also had a customer attempt to open an account with a POA when we found out he was representing a Cuban national and was planning to use the account to accept funds from Cuba by way of Canada.

As Carey says, it all depends on the specific circumstances.

POA accounts also bring up CIP issues. An individual with power-of-attorney is the “customer” if an account is opened for a person who lacks legal capacity, but if the account is opened for a competent person, the latter is the “customer” and the person holding the power-of-attorney is merely an agent.