Dealing With High-Risk Clients And Final Advice For Maintaining An Effective AML Compliance Program

The third of a three-part series on the new landscape of anti-money laundering enforcement

Dealing with high-risk clients in an era of enhanced AML enforcement

To identify and trace criminal activity, federal law enforcement relies on the mandatory filing of suspicious activity reports (SARs) by financial institutions subject to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). Because of the importance of SARs to law enforcement efforts, regulators do not require—and indeed have no interest in requiring—that financial institutions refuse to maintain accounts for clients with higher risk profiles, such as certain money services businesses (MSBs).

In January 2015, Treasury Under Secretary David Cohen made this very point, remarking that through MSBs, the government has "access to crucial information that regulators and law enforcement depend on every day to prevent the abuse of the financial system." He went on to express concern that "banks have been indiscriminately terminating the