COMMENT CALL: The U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) recently issued a Request for Information (RFI), asking interested parties for comments and suggestions on how it can streamline, modernize and update the nation’s Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) regulations and guidance.
The RFI includes 26 questions for which FinCEN is requesting comments, ideas, examples, data, and other information to help it update the regulations. Its goal is to decrease the BSA compliance burden, while not sacrificing the usefulness of the regulations to law enforcement.
The RFI’s areas of interest include the following, as summarized by CUNA:
- BSA Reporting: Do SARs & CTRs provide highly useful information to combat financial crimes, relative to the compliance burden? Would another type of report, with different information, be more useful? Would another type of report be more efficient?
- Automatic Updates: Should BSA report requirements be automatically updated, to ensure they continue to be helpful? For example, should FinCEN more regularly update certain BSA reports’ fields based on frequency of use, terms included, or other relevant factors and trends identified? Should automatic updates to dollar thresholds occur to account for inflation adjustments? Should FinCEN consider periodic adjustments, such as customized thresholds, to BSA regulations and guidance to account for changes in risk, such as changes in geographic risk?
- Obsolete Requirements: Are some BSA requirements obsolete such that they no longer provide helpful information? Additionally, are there any BSA regulations or guidance that target risks that no longer exists?
- Duplicate Requirements: Do any BSA requirements overlap or duplicate requirements imposed by other regulations?
- Inefficiencies: Can BSA requirements be more efficient? For example, are there regulations or guidance that are overly burdensome in comparison to the risk posed?
- Risk-Based Regulations: Do BSA regulations encourage credit unions to direct more attention and resources toward higher-risk members and activities, consistent with the risk profile of the credit union? Are there specific regulations for which applying a risk-based approach is challenging?
- Protecting the Financial System: Are there threats to the financial system and/or our national security that are not adequately addressed by the current BSA regulations?
Make your voice heard
The League plans to submit a comment letter in response to this RFI, but we need to hear from our member credit unions. If you have any thoughts or comments on the RFI’s questions, please share your feedback with Paul Guttormsson by Feb. 7, so that we can include your views in our comment letter, which is due Feb. 14.