The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the National Credit Union Administration, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued a joint news release on July 19, 2024, to solicit public comment on proposed updates to the agencies’ requirements that the institutions they supervise establish and implement compliant anti-money laundering and countering-the-financing-of-terrorism (AML/CFT) programs.
The amendments proposed by these four financial regulators are intended to match amendments proposed concurrently by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network pursuant to the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020.
The objective of the amendments is to develop a more effective, modernized regulatory regime through a multi-stage implementation process, by:
- Amending the existing rules to make explicit the requirement that financial institutions establish, implement and maintain effective, risk-based and reasonably designed AML/CFT programs, including a mandatory risk assessment process;
- Requiring financial institutions to incorporate government-wide AML/CFT priorities into risk-based compliance programs, and;
- Promoting consistency across FinCEN’s rules for different types of financial institutions.
In addition to the interagency statement and proposed rule published in the Federal Register, FinCEN issued a Fact Sheet summarizing the AML/CFT requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act, describing the overarching purpose and priorities of the regime, and explaining the risk-assessment process imposed by the proposed rule. An important objective of the Anti-Money Laundering Act and the proposed amendments is to increase the scope, frequency and type of feedback that financial institutions share with government agencies.
Stakeholders have 60 days to submit written comments following publication of the proposed rule in the Federal Register on July 3, 2024.
Press release | Interagency statement | Proposed rule | Fact sheet