NCUA Lacks BSA Transparency

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's Office of the Inspector General recently released a report looking at FDIC's respose to Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) concerns at FDIC examined banks.

The report looked at a four-year period between October 1, 2009 and September 30, 2013.

The audit repoted on the number of BSA examinations and visitations conducted by FDIC and state banking agencies. The report also provided summary statisitics for each fiscal year on:

• the number of banks cited for apparent BSA violations,
• the number of apparent violations,
• the number of formal and informal enforcement actions imposed on FDIC-supervised banks,
• and the number of referrals to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen) for the issuance of Civil Money Penalties (CMP).

The report found that during the four-year period

"the FDIC and/or applicable state regulator cited FDIC-supervised institutions for 3,294 apparent violations of BSA-related regulations, agreed to or issued 175 BSA-related informal and formal enforcement actions, and made 22 referrals to FinCEN for CMPs."

However, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) with the exception of a few published enforcement orders does not disclose any information regarding BSA and AML concerns at NCUA examined credit unions.

As a matter of transparency, NCUA should publish summary statistics regarding BSA and AML concerns at credit unions. For example, FDIC in its annual report publishes the number of BSA examinations and the number of consent orders and memoranda of understanding that are based in whole or in part on apparent BSA violations.

In addition, NCUA's Office of the Inspector General needs to conduct an audit of the agency with regard to BSA supervision. This issue has not been the focus of an an Inspector General audit over the last 15 years.

It seems that such an audit is well overdue.

Read the FDIC Audit Report.