Questions and Answers

The suspicious activity report (SAR) regulations require you to notify your board of directors or an appropriate board committee that SARs have been filed.  The regulations do not mandate any particular notice form for your board.  Therefore, you may provide actual copies of SARs to your board or provide some type of summary report.  Your policies may also dictate that staff at the senior management level be notified of SAR filings but this is not a Bank Secrecy Act requirement.

Finally, it is important to maintain the confidentiality of SAR filings and not notify the subject that such a filing has occurred.  The BSA/AML Examination Manual addresses the situation where the SAR is related to an insider or a board member.  According to footnote 68:

As noted in the Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group’s The SAR Activity Review – Trends, Tips & Issues, Issue 2, June 2001, “In the rare instance when suspicious activity is related to an individual in the organization, such as the president or one of the members of the board of directors, the established policy that would require notification of a SAR filing to such an individual should not be followed. Deviations to established policies and procedures so as to avoid notification of a SAR filing to a subject of the SAR should be documented and appropriate uninvolved senior organizational personnel should be so advised.”