the AffirmX blog
Scrutiny of Bank Secrecy Act compliance at financial institutions everywhere is surging. Fines and enforcement orders are all over the headlines. Regulators, as well as board members, want to know that banks and credit unions have taken a good look at what their exposure is, and have a solid plan in place to address those [...]
A version of this post originally appeared on CU Insight. As the amount of financial institutions declines, many smaller institutions speculate about the uncertainty of their own futures. The downtrend has certainly been widely reported over the past few weeks, months and even years, even in the general press, which tends to run stark images of [...]
Though its probably been a year or two (or 10 or 20) since your school days, the idea still rings true that the best way to prepare for an examination is to know what is going to be on the examination. That was true in then, and it's true in a compliance examination, too. Spending time becoming [...]
This post originally ran on CU Insight. Risk. It’s something that every credit union must deal with. Risk and its management, once broadly accepted as part of the fuzzy territory of doing business as a financial institution, have become increasingly hot topics over the past five years, giving rise to the burgeoning field of Enterprise [...]
What kinds of things are financial institutions doing that send up a flare to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in its search for fair lending violations? One good place to look is in the CFPB's fall 2015 semi-annual report, where the bureau outlined those areas that indicate heightened fair lending risk. In other words, if the [...]
A wave of cyber extortion appears to be heading our way. The question is no longer if it might hit, but when. The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council released a statement warning financial institutions about the increasing frequency and severity of cyber attacks involving extortion. What do these attacks look like and what should you be [...]
You investigate. You write your suspicious activity report. You click submit. Then what happens to your SAR? The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, otherwise known as FinCEN, released its 2014 annual report of Suspicious Activity Report stats. It includes an overview of what happens to SARs after they are reported. The SAR Stats Technical Bulletin from [...]
While the overall number of Suspicious Activity Reports associated with crowdfunding is relatively low, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has found that mentions of crowdfunding in SAR filings increased 171% just through the first half of 2014 compared to all of 2013. Crowdfunding has become a new favorite tool in the hands of money launderers. [...]
Yes, summer is already over and fall is upon us. That means sweater weather, changing leaves, and pumpkin spice. But it also means the year is winding down. If it was your New Year’s resolution to file at least one SAR this year, time is getting short. And if you haven’t been planning on filing, [...]
You can tell a lot about a year by looking at its top news stories. We’ve compiled a list of the most popular Risk InboX posts from 2015 for a look back on the highlights (and perhaps lowlights) of this year in compliance. 1. Having Trouble Taming the Continuing SAR Beast Our most popular blog post [...]
