A recent court opinion emphasizes the sensitive issues involved in terminating potentially difficult employees — or, from the employee’s or perhaps the government’s perspective, in terminating whistleblowers who were retaliated against for being willing to point out compliance failures. Although this competing dynamic applies across all industries, a recent opinion from the U.S. Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, Kell v. Iberville Bank, addressed such a situation in the Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”)/Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) context, in which a bank’s former compliance officer sued her former employer for allegedly terminating her in retaliation for raising uncomfortable issues about claimed insider abuse and the alleged failure to file a Suspicious Activity Report (“SAR”).
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Federal Banking Agencies Encourage BSA Resource Sharing
Five U.S. regulatory agencies—the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (“FRB”), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”), the National Credit Union Administration (“NCUA”), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”), and the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”)—released on October 3, 2018 an Interagency Statement on Sharing Bank Secrecy Act Resources (the “Statement”). This guidance addresses instances in which certain banks and credit unions can enter into “collaborative arrangements” to share resources to manage their Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) and anti-money laundering (“AML”) obligations more efficiently and more effectively.
The Statement contemplates banks sharing resources such as internal controls, independent testing, and AML/BSA training (it does not apply to collaborative arrangements formed for information sharing among financial institutions under Section 314(b) of the U.S. Patriot Act). Such resource sharing contemplates reducing costs and increasing efficiencies in the ways banks manage their BSA and AML obligations. The Statement clearly is addressed primarily to community banks, for which the costs of AML/BSA compliance can be significant, and which presumably engage in “less complex operations [and have] lower risk profiles for money laundering or terrorist financing.” The Statement potentially represents another step in an ongoing AML reform process, which increasingly acknowledges the costs of AML compliance to industry.
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Banking Regulators Issue Exemption from CIP Requirements for Premium Finance Loans
The Federal Banking Agencies (“FBAs”) — collectively the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”); the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (“Federal Reserve”); the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”); and the National Credit Union Administration (“NCUA”) — just issued with the concurrence of FinCEN an Order granting an exemption from the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Outlines BSA Compliance Obligations and How One Small Bank Failed to Meet Them
Second Part in a Two-Part Series
The Tale of an AML BSA Exam Gone Wrong
As we have blogged, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld the decision of the Board of Directors of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) to issue a cease and desist order against California Pacific Bank (the “Bank”) for the Bank’s alleged failure to comply with Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) regulations or have a sufficient plan and program in place to do so.
In our first post, we described how the Ninth Circuit rejected the Bank’s constitutional challenge to the relevant regulation, and accorded broad deference to the FDIC in its interpretations of its own regulations, expressed in the form of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council Manual (“FFIEC Manual”). This post discusses the Court’s review of the Bank’s challenge under the Administrative Procedures Act to the FDIC’s factual findings of AML program failings.
The California Pacific opinion provides a significant piece of guidance for banks questioning the adequacy of its BSA compliance program: consult and abide the FFIEC Manual. Furthermore, it demonstrates that no shortcuts are permitted when it comes to establishing and maintaining a BSA compliance program. The BSA and the FDIC’s regulations contain firm guidelines and the FFIEC Manual puts banks of all sizes on notice of what compliance is expected of them. The independence of both the AML compliance officer and of testing; adequate risk assessments of customer accounts; and the correction of prior regulator findings of AML deficiencies are key.
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Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Rejects Constitutional Challenge to AML Compliance Program Regulation
Court Defers Heavily to the FDIC and the FFIEC Manual
First Part in a Two-Part Series
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld the decision of the Board of Directors of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) to issue a cease and desist order against California Pacific Bank (the “Bank”) for the Bank’s alleged failure to comply with Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) regulations or have a sufficient plan and program in place to do so.
This decision, California Pacific Bank v. FDIC, provides a nearly step-by-step analysis of what is required of banks under the BSA and a vivid illustration of an Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”) program that did not pass muster in the eyes of a regulator. It highlights the general rules that banks of all sizes, but particularly smaller community banks, must keep in mind concerning their compliance programs – size does not matter and you are on notice of what compliance entails.
Importantly, and before upholding the FDIC’s factual findings regarding the Bank’s violations, the Ninth Circuit first rejected the Bank’s claim that the regulation at issue (which required the Bank to implement an AML compliance program which complied with the “four pillars” of such a program) was unconstitutionally vague. Moreover, the Ninth Circuit found that the FDIC has broad discretion when interpreting this regulation, described by the Court as “ambiguous.”
This post will summarize the case and the key role played by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council Manual (“FFIEC Manual”) in both the Court’s rejection of the constitutional challenge and the broad deference which the Court accorded to the FDIC and its interpretation of its own regulations. The second post will turn to the Bank’s alleged AML program failings and the Bank’s challenges to the FDIC’s many factual findings.
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FDIC Provides Some Statistics on Violations Found During BSA/AML Exams: One Percent of Exams Lead to Formal Enforcement Actions
In its Summer 2017 issue of Supervisory Insights, published last week, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) provides some insight into its examination process and outcomes for Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”)/Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”) compliance in an article entitled The Bank Secrecy Act: A Supervisory Update (“Supervisory Update”). Although the Supervisory Update also summarizes the BSA and its history, we will focus here on the discussion of FDIC examinations.
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FDIC Chairman: A “Culture of Compliance” Begins at the Top
In his remarks during last week’s launch of Case Western Reserve School of Law’s Financial Integrity Institute, FDIC Chairman Martin J. Gruenberg spoke on the historical context of today’s BSA/AML regulatory framework and the FDIC’s role in promoting and maintaining financial integrity. The Financial Integrity Institute describes its mission as seeking “to advance financial integrity