Dominion Community
Welcome to The Dominion Advisory Group’s Knowledge Community.
Staying current with AML compliance is a constant challenge. As someone who is responsible for part or all of your institution’s AML requirements you probably feel some days like it’s impossible to keep up. We understand that stress and hope to do a little something about it.
The Dominion Knowledge Community is a place where AML practitioners can visit to pose questions about challenging problems and receive meaningful answers that will increase their effectiveness and improve their programs.
From time to time Dominion will answer those questions, but instead of always hearing from us we will ask an impressive group of AML compliance leaders to provide their input and guidance. These people will include AML officers of global institutions as well as community banks. We will ask friends of ours who oversee large and small bank suspicious activity and transaction monitoring programs to provide their insights. Internal auditors and former examiners will also provide guidance for those who want to better understand program reviews and testing.
In order to make this as useful as possible we will not post the names of those submitting questions without their approval.
Welcome.
Below is a list of the recently added Questions & Answers tops open for discussion. Click one of the topics below to read and participate in the discussion.
Recent Questions & Answers
There is a lot of debate at my bank regarding what constitutes a “reasonable time frame” for completing an AML investigation. We are a duel regulated Bank (Federal Reserve and OCC) and even our two regulators seem to have differing opinions about the term “reasonable” as described in the available guidance. What does Dominion think?
Sometimes the issue often referred to as the “30 day clock” and the issue of “reasonable time frame” get confused.” They shouldn’t. The 30 day clock issue has been discussed within the AML community ad nauseam for several years, and FinCEN has issued very clear guidance on that issue. However, what is not so clear is what constitutes a reasonable amount of time from the point an alert is created to the point the ensuing investigation is completed, and in some instances a SAR is filed.
I would like to know what the industry's practice on SAR aggregation is. Do you see financial institutions aggregate with the prior SAR(s) under this situation: If the suspicious activity in question has not continued during the 90-day review period, but a new alert on related activity reoccurs at a later date, should a financial institution aggregate with the prior SAR(s)? What if the activity occurs a year after the 90-day review, should a financial institution aggregate the new SAR with the previous one?
The answer to the question can be found in The SAR Activity Review Trends, Tips & Issues, Issue 8, April 2005, pages 32 and 33.
In this guidance, FinCEN addresses the issue of continuing suspicious activity. When reading the FinCEN language we believe it can confidently be inferred that “ongoing” activity is defined as suspicious activity that occurs within 90 days of a previous SAR filing.
FinCEN specifically addresses instances where the suspicious activity originally reported changes. To quote from Issue 8,
When I read the FFIEC manual regarding continuing and ongoing activity, the manual states that a SAR should be filed no less than every 90 days. Does this mean that my institution could file a SAR each and every time the suspicious activity occurs (i.e. structuring) instead of creating a 90-day review process (i.e. the structuring activity is currently being picked up by an automated transaction monitoring system)?
The FFIEC manual cites Section 5 — Issues and Guidance, The SAR Activity Review, Issue 1, October 2000, page 27 that states, “FinCEN’s guidelines suggest that banks should report continuing suspicious activity by filing a report at least every 90 days.”
Whether your institution should file a SAR each time a suspect conducts similar suspicious activity within 90 days of a SAR is addressed in The SAR Activity Review Trends, Tips & Issues, Issue 8, April 2005, page 32: