Bank Secrecy Act-
We recommend the following
changes:
-
Increase the CTR reporting
threshold from $10,000 to $25,000 to reflect the
affects of inflations and economic changes. This
amount was established in 1979 and it takes over
$26,000 to have the save buying power today as
$10,000 did in 1979. Many people today conduct
business involving cash transactions in amounts
greater than $10,000. By filing CTR's on these
legitimate business transactions, the system is
filled with unnecessary reports.
-
Increase the threshold on
monetary instruments to $15,000
Today more and more people
utilize monetary instruments to send money. The
majority of these are for lawful purposes. The
present record keeping requirement for the low
threshold of $3000 is burdensome for banks.
-
Decrease the time before
exempting a customer for CTRs.
It does not take 12 months to
determine the normal routine activity of a
business. We believe it takes no more than 3 months
to establish a banking pattern.
-
Remove the monitoring
requirement for biennial exemptions.
Banks already monitor exemptions
on a daily basis, or at least annual to insure that
the business is still meeting the exemption. A
business should be exempt until they no longer meet
all requirements. At that time, a bank can revoke
the exemption.
-
Increase the threshold for
filing a SAR to the same as the requirements for
filing CTR's, which we believe should be $25,000.
-
Have better guidance on filing
a SAR.
While banks need to have
discretion in what constitutes suspicious activity,
guidelines need to be in place once transactions are
deemed suspicious. Such as, once a bank is
suspicious, how far back does the institution
research to get an amount? An example would be a
small time check-kiting scheme. Once it is noticed,
it could take a bank going back months, maybe even
years to reach $5000. Better guidance would allow
for more consistency in filing these reports.
-
Remove the 90-day re-file, only
re-file if activity changes.
Once a report has been filed,
there is no reason to continue filing a follow up
report every 90 days. The only time a bank should
re-file is if the patterns change. If an agency
needs more information, the agencies should request
it from the bank.
-
Remove banks from monitoring
MSBs.
The banking industry already has
enough to monitor. The added cost and time to
monitor these businesses adds up. If the government
wants to allow MSB's and regulate MSB's, do it, but
leave us out of the MSB regulation business.
Sharon Ferrell
Senior Vice President
Bank Secrecy Act Officer
