An interesting comment was made to me recently. We were always hush hush about telling customers that they are structuring and to stop. I've heard other banks are telling such customers.."stop this stuff or else" with regards to the obvious structuring. I'd like to know your stand on this...it would certainly reduce my number of such activities and SARS if we could just tell the peeps stop it! I look forward to your thoughts on this.

A number of posters are using a specific brochure which they give to the customer about structuring. The employee does not need to say anything and let's the brochure do the "talking". If you review some of the recent posts here, you will find a link to ordering the brochure.

Trees:
We use the brochure and we are not at all shy about explaining to our valued customers the implications of structuring to avoid BSA reporting requirements. Our feeling is that we owe it to them. Obviously, there is never any mention of what's happening behind the scenes when we become aware that they structure transactions.

Never mentioned an SAR of course, but have most definitely told customers who didn't seem to quite get it after being given the brochure that they had to stop or the account would be shut down. Some stopped, others were shut down. One who stopped became on of the largest cash customers.

Since structuring is a violation of law, confronting a customer that you "believe" is structuring and accusing them of a violation of law is really a tricky issue. I would recommend that you make a decision of whether you want to keep the account or not - close the account (with the standard letter that you "chose to no longer have their account") or leave it open - file your SARs if you leave it open - and keep your mouth shut. Handing them a brochure is fine, but accusing a customer and telling them to stop something is not the way to go IMHO.

Not if you only do it in blatant situations, which is what we did. We were fully prepared to let the account go, even for supposedly "good" customers. There was no justification to keep them if they continued what they were doing. We weren't guessing, as the results showed.

We don't say anything. We just continue to file SARs every 90 days and evaluate whether or not the relationship is worth keeping.

Here'a prior thread where this was discussed. In essence, you send someone who knows what he or she is talking about, not the "wink and a nod" specialist.

Be darn careful about what you say, but tell them to stop it and be prepared to explain to an examiner why telling someone to stop structuring in no way equates to assisting in structuring.

We always explained to the examiner that we were not assisting in structuring because this customer obviously had already figured that out. We were stopping it to limit the bank's risk.

Besides distributing the brochure, Facts You Should Know, I have the account officer interview the customer regarding the activity as a marketing discussion to determine if the customer needs cash management products. To this day, I am still surprised how many accountants and attorneys "advise" their clients to stay under the reporting threshold when depositing/withdrawing cash. After a brief conversation with the customer(s), they are actually relieved to deposit/withdraw large amounts of cash & file a CTR. The customer's that continue to structure after being interviewed are either given the goodbye notice or an anaysis of the business receipts can justify the cash activity as being normal. Of course all this is documented in our legal files and we have had no issues with internal auditors or the regulators regarding our due diligence process.

We do tell the customer to stop structuring and give them a copy of our brochure.

Where can we find this brochure? "Facts You Should Know" I had them in a prior institution but not here. Thanks!