Blog: Compliance

The new-account exception is the broadest hold authority in Regulation CC. For the first 30 days of an account's life, most of the availability schedule simply does not apply to ordinary checks, there is no regulatory maximum on how long they can be held, and no per-hold notice is required. That is a lot of latitude, and it exists for a good reason: a bank knows almost nothing about a brand-new depositor, and new accounts are where a large share of check fraud lands.

The latitude is ...

When a customer who receives Social Security dies, the benefit deposits do not stop right away. The payment arriving the month after death has to go back, and often one or two more arrive before the agency's records catch up. By the time Treasury asks for the money, a surviving spouse or adult child may have spent it. The federal rule for who pays in that case is 31 CFR Part 210, Subpart B, and it puts the bank in the middle. A bank that knows the rules and answers a reclamation notice ...

Ask ten bankers which training is legally required and you will get ten different lists, most of them too long. Annual fair lending training, UDAAP training, elder abuse training, OFAC training, Reg CC training: all of them are common, most are wise, and examiners will ask about several. But only a handful of training obligations are actually written into regulation, and the ones that are rarely say "annual."

The difference matters. A training program built on "everything is ...

Training is the BSA/AML pillar most banks believe they have covered and most often cannot prove. The sessions happened. The online modules were assigned. But when an examiner asks which lenders completed training on lending-related red flags, what the board was taught and when, or what happened to the six employees who never finished, the answers live in three systems and two people's memories.

This post covers what the rules actually require for Bank Secrecy Act training, who must ...