The Community Banking Corner provides useful tips for anti-money laundering/Bank Secrecy Act (AML/BSA) professionals in community banks to help them in their day-to-day jobs.
Our regular contributor, Carl Francois, is the senior vice president and the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and fraud officer at Southern First Bank. Francois has over 14 years of experience in the BSA, the Office of Foreign Assets Control and fraud. In addition, he serves as a board member of the ACAMS Carolinas Chapter. If you would like to contribute to this column or have any topics you would like to suggest, email editor@acams.org.
Community bankers often ask examiners which internal audit or consulting firms they should use for Bank Secrecy Act/anti-money laundering (BSA/AML) independent testing. However, regulators cannot endorse or recommend products and services. Even if they could, it would not be doing the bank any favors....
Does your anti-money laundering (AML) department have a collaborative relationship with law enforcement (LE)? If so, you know exactly the benefits of this relationship. If not, this should be a goal! Partnerships are a “win-win” when it comes to community banks, or banks of...
As the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) officer for a mid-sized bank in a state with legalized medicinal cannabis, I was open to the concept of banking cannabis. The bank has a strong BSA program with well-seasoned investigators who might be eager to tackle the challenge...
William E. Lowe is the president and chief operating officer of Texas Brand Bank and Texas Brand Bancshares, Inc. Lowe joined the bank in 2008, and served as senior vice president and executive vice president before being elected president and director in 2012. He has...
The mandatory implementation of the Customer Due Diligence (CDD) Final Rule, including beneficial ownership compliance, made 2018 quite the year for the anti-financial crime community. As regulators continue to focus on compliance to the Rule in 2019, banks will feel the impact of these...
As banks grow (especially community banks), there comes a time when the need for an increase in staff is essential. However, convincing management that staff is needed is a major undertaking all to itself. This edition of the Community Banking Corner will focus on...
A conversation between Carl Francois, SVP BSA manager at South State Bank, and Rebecca “Becky” Schauer Robertson, EVP director of AML compliance at South State Bank regarding some of the challenges community bankers are facing in 2018. It is hard to believe it has...
So much has been published recently about human trafficking, which is a heinous crime that all of us must come together to help eliminate as best we can. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime defines human trafficking as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring...
The Community Banking Corner section provides useful tips for Bank Secrecy Act/anti-money laundering (BSA/AML) professionals in community banks to help them in their day-to-day jobs. This section will focus on all aspects of BSA/AML from de-risking and its effects on smaller banks to efficiencies...
The goal of the Community Banking Corner is to provide useful tips for Bank Secrecy Act/anti-money laundering (BSA/AML) professionals in community banks to help them in their day-to-day jobs. This section will focus on all aspects of BSA/AML from the effects of de-risking on smaller...