CTR Occupation

I know that for a CTR Disabled is not a valid occupation but we have a non customer who cashed a check which generated a CTR and claims that he has been disabled since he was 5 years old and has never worked. So for the occupation is it acceptable to put Disabled/Never Worked?

Occupation is not a required field on the CTR. I believe there are old threads out there that discuss this and if I remember correct that would be acceptable if it was a long term disability, like your example if they have never worked.

Citing the same lack of authority, I agree "never employed" is accurate.

One of my client's employees put "trust fund baby" in the box. That may have been TMI.

Thanks!

Bcompliance, I went to a BSA/AML Seminar a few weeks ago where they said that occupation IS a required field, and that the CTR form doesn't have an asterisk next to that field because it's not a critical field. So just to clarify, it is NOT required?

Sorry, "required" meant critical. You can submit the form without the occupation on it. If you have the occupation in your system somewhere, you should include it on the form (or you should expect criticism from auditors/examiners). If you have no idea what the entity you're filing the CTR is on does, you are not "required" to include the occupation (in this case, I would argue any criticism because you are submitting it as accurately as you can with the information avaliable to you).

It is the same thing with something like an email address. If the information is available, you should include it on the CTR.

You might want to re-read Question #1:

https://www.fincen.gov/frequently-asked-questions-regarding-fincen-currency-transaction-report-ctr

I would not consider occupation "information is not readily available." - all you have to do is ask at the time of transaction.

Individuals have an occupation. An entity does not.

A business (sole proprietorship or entity) has an NAICS code. An individual does not.

Whether a field is "critical" or not, if you have the information you are expected to include it; examiners and auditors can and should criticize the omission. As suggested, if the person is standing across the counter from you, there is no intelligent excuse for not asking for his or her occupation.

Randy, I am not disagreeing with you or Question #1, but there are (rare) instances in which the account has been open for a long period of time (no record of occupation) and the teller conducting the transaction does not ask what their occupation is. In that instance, we would not have listed the occupaion on the CTR.

And in that instance, the criticism will either be of your internal procedures that don't require the teller to ask, training if the procedures require that the teller ask but the teller didn't know they needed to, or on management oversight if the teller was trained, but didn't follow procedures and we did nothing to address with the teller.

Regardless of the root cause, you had the opportunity to obtain the information and did not.

Brian and Randy have a joint account. It was opened in the previous century. The bank does not have the gender, date of birth, occupation, phone number, e-mail address, or form of identification for either. Brian makes a deposit in a reportable amount so both persons must be listed on the CTR.

For Randy, the bank will check "Unknown" for the date of birth. It will do the same for the form of identification. (If it does not, the e-filing system will not allow the CTR to be submitted.) The bank will leave all of Randy's other fields blank.

For Brian (facing a bank employee) the bank will obtain all of the requested information and include it on the CTR. If it does not, any competent third party reviewer (which in real life would include Brian and Randy) will criticize the bank.

FIN-2012-G002 says:

For those fields that are not marked as "critical" for technical filing purposes, the BSA E-Filing System will accept reports, in which these fields have been left blank. FinCEN expects, however, that financial institutions will provide the most complete filing information available within each report consistent with existing regulatory expectations, regardless of whether or not the individual fields are deemed critical for technical filing purposes.

I'm not going to disagree with any of the comments that you have made, because you are all more knowledgeable than I am on the matter. My stance is if you're filing thousands of CTRs annually, chances are a few were filed without some information on it that should have been in there. Whether it is a systematic problem, training issues, etc. is a different story. I am definately not encouraging people to file CTRs without the correct and accurate information. If you have a strong compliance management system, chances are you have adressed the issue, documented it, and moved on. Thanks you for the feedback though, I do appreciate the reinforcement of knowledge from time to time.

Great - thank you all so much!

I'm also going to train our tellers to update the system (or submit it to someone who can with signed proof of the authorization) for some of the older accounts that don't have DOB, SSN, etc. That way, in a perfect world, we'll have everything up to date

Good. I would not collect and retain gender information in any circumstance. If she's standing there, fine I'll check a box based on observation, not query.

We have a customer that has had an account here since the '90's, before CIP as we know it today. We have to file a CTR on her but never got her occupation. What do we put in occupation for this one? Unknown - before CIP?

I would try to contact the customer to request the information.

The banker did and all he would say is retired and hung up. Really friendly person....

Maybe we'll put "retired - unknown former occupation" or whatever will fit.

Loolk at the "Prohibited words and phrases" in the CTR filing instructions. "Unknown" is a prohibited word. All you can do is complete the CTR with the information you have.

If all you have is retired, then that is what you have to enter. If you don't know the occupation, then leave the field blank.

retired is acceptable. an occupation is nothing but the type of work a person performs. I am currently a banker. when I retire, my occupation is not banker, it is retired.

The CTR instructions do state that if previous occupation is known, it should be stated in addition to retired.