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NAFCU Vice President of Legislative Affairs Brad Thaler Monday, in a letter to Senate leadership, shared the association's support for including the bipartisan Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 as an amendment to the fiscal year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), S. 4049. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and Ranking Member Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, last week introduced the proposed reforms to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA)/anti-money laundering (AML) regime.

BSA/AML reform is one of the association's advocacy priorities for 2020, and NAFCU previously urged the Senate to advance BSA/AML legislation as the House last year passed NAFCU-supported legislation to reduce the burden of suspicious activity report (SAR) and currency transaction report (CTR) filings.

As proposed, the bill would require the Treasury Department to evaluate the usefulness of CTR and SAR filings and review whether filing thresholds for these reports need to be updated. More on the bill.

"NAFCU has consistently recognized the importance of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), BSA, and AML/countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) requirements in assisting in the prevention of tax evasion, money laundering and terrorist financing," wrote Thaler.  

"Our members have a good working relationship with FinCEN, and they consistently inform us that the publication of periodic BSA/AML guidance is very helpful," Thaler added. "However, BSA/AML requirements remain a burden to implement, and we believe that the system is in need of improvements and reform."

In the letter, Thaler highlighted two aspects of the legislation that NAFCU believes would help credit unions more effectively target their resources by:

• requiring companies to disclose their true beneficial ownership information to FinCEN in efforts to create a nonpublic database of beneficial ownership information; and
• making critical modernizations and improvements to the current BSA/AML system, many of which NAFCU strongly supports.

Additionally, NAFCU joined with eight other financial services trade associations to the Senate Armed Services Committee leadership urge them to support the inclusion of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 in the defense bill, S. 4049.

NAFCU will continue to monitor the bill as it moves through the Senate. View NAFCU's resources on BSA/AML, including a webinar and previous blog posts (here and here), to help credit unions comply with the customer due diligence rule.