Following is the NOTICE currently running at the bottom of FinCEN's Home page:

On February 24, 2012, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a final rule requiring the electronic filing of most FinCEN reports by July 1, 2012. Institutions are strongly encouraged to begin using the BSA E-filing System as soon as possible. For more information about mandatory E-Filing, please see our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), and the E-filing webinar. .

It's my opinion that many banks are unaware that e-filing becomes mandatory after June 30. Unfortunately, I think they are also the banks that do not visit the FinCEN website or BOL.

If an announcement is made and no one at a particular bank reads it, will they still know about it?

This week I attended a conference where a FinCEN representative indicated that several banks in that state, (about 25% of the total number) had filed paper CTRs after June 30, 2012.

Obviously, FinCEN could penalize them directly or just leave it to their federal functional regulatory agency to deal with in the examination process. In my opinion, failing to file electronically after that date is a near clean sweep of the pillar violations: training, internal controls, and individual responsible for compliance were each deficient.

Geeze...

I have brought this up to banks who were surprised! Living under rocks apparently.

You blew it, Kaybee. If you had not given them a heads up during the independent examination, they could have had the "grand slam" of compliance events, four pillar violations and a sound basis for the observation that they had failed to establish a BSA program.

It occurs to me that FinCEN already has a premonition of how big this problem is. They know how many banks have registered to e-file in Anystate vs. the number of banks in Anystate. (The same would be true for MSBs, etc. but I'm not concerned about them.)

How do you communicate with those who live under rocks? How do you even persuade yourself that they are aware of anything?

This is actually surprising to me. Our core processor checked and double checked to make sure we were going to be filing electronically (which we already were as a discrete filer) and our EIC from OCC asked while they were doing the exam AND then followed up with an email the week prior to the deadline.

How could these banks miss that?

Judging by the number of vendors who mailed, called and e-mailed me trying to peddle their wares, I can't fathom how anyone didn't know.

Do all banks have internet?

I cannot imagine one that does not!??

Well, it's not likely one without Internet access will argue the point here.

Very true! I was chatting with an examiner recently who told me about a small bank without email or internet..the bank president asked them to email him via his home email. The examiners rejected that suggestion.

Also was at a bank last year, very small, no website or intranet but some staff did have email. I do not know about internet access but they were not very internet oriented at the bank.

One of our BSA auditors was telling me about a bank she examined. President, one officer, one assistant, three tellers. They have two computers. They filed two CTRs last year but they filed them on-line.

How does anyone have less technology than that?

Print them and mail them in....computer does not necessarily mean "online". But we are only speculating.

Some of us "oldtimers" remember when we actually had to do business without internet, e-mail or any word processors. FIL's eventually came in the mail. Just think, the USPS would be "in the black" if they had to deliver all of the pronouncements from CFPB via snailmail now!

My old bank was like that. Only recently did staff get email. The internet was completely locked down. I could not imagine being a compliance officer there. The internet has made research vastly easier than reading through tomes.

I looked around for Jimmy Stewart while I was there.

Also, access to internet does not mean it is used.

LOL!

Posted on FinCEN web site on July 13, 2012

FinCEN Announces Outreach to Institutions Continuing to File Reports in Paper Format

On July 1, 2012, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) mandated that all financial institutions begin to file most FinCEN reports electronically. We realize that a combination of increased volume of new E-Filing registrations, as well as the normal volume of E-Filing resulted in delays and failed login sessions during the last two weeks of June. The BSA E-Filing system is now functioning properly and we have begun an initiative to contact those institutions that are continuing to file FinCEN reports in paper format. Institutions filing reports in paper format after the mandatory deadline will receive a notice from FinCEN indicating that they have been identified as filing paper reports, and will be directed to the BSA E-Filing System. Institutions are reminded that continued attempts to file reports in paper format may result in civil money penalties from FinCEN.

My governmentspeak is pretty good, but I'm not certain what is being said here. (As an aside, I cannot imagine what problems with e-filing have to do with banks still filing on paper; I don't think the paper filers had a clue that e-filing was required.) The last sentence notwithstanding, it sounds like they are going to mail paper filers a letter, but let the regulators deal with the problem during the examination process.

I'm assuming they are using this as a "lesson learned" for April 1, 2013 when (supposedly) the legacy forms will vanish from the web site. Surely, they will not assume that everyone will be on board on that transition date too?

Today they announced E-filing for Form 8300 reports. These are the super CTRs used by businesses who receive cash or certain monetary instruments over $10,000 (auto dealers have a wonderful time with these things). They intimated that they want to go all-E with these filings at some point. Good luck on that. Take the number of mini-CUs and banks that didn't have internet access to file electronically and multiply it hundreds-fold for the merchants who are supposed to complete these reports.