FinCEN regulations require periodic screening of past and current records against the renewed lists of suspected subjects, provided by law enforcement agencies. Any matches must be reported back on a bi-monthly basis.
FinCEN’s regulations under Section 314(a) enable federal, state, local, and foreign (European Union) law enforcement agencies, through FinCEN, to reach out to more than 34,000 points of contact at more than 14,000 financial institutions to locate accounts and transactions of persons that may be involved in terrorism or money laundering.
FinCEN receives requests from law enforcement and upon review, sends notifications to designated contacts within financial institutions across the country once every 2 weeks informing them new information has been made available via a secure Internet web site.
The requests contain subject and business names, addresses, and as much identifying data as possible to assist the financial industry in searching their records.
The financial institutions must query their records for data matches, including accounts maintained by the named subject during the preceding 12 months and transactions conducted within the last 6 months. Financial institutions have 2 weeks from the posting date of the request to respond with any positive matches. If the search does not uncover any matching of accounts or transactions, the financial institution is instructed not to reply to the 314(a) request.
FinCEN’s 314(a) Fact Sheet, April 19 2022
Summing it up, the law enforcement agencies provide information on the persons of interest to FinCEN. The information includes: subject and business names, addresses, and as much identifying data as possible. Once every 2 weeks FinCEN sends a batch of new data on the said persons to the designated financial institutions, requiring them to screen their records as follows:
Financial Institutions must respond by REPORTING any positive matches, if any.
Fincom’s SEARCH-AND-REPORT Micro-Service provides an ultimate solution for the above requirement. The system is capable of screening, resolving, cross-referencing, and matching personal and/or company names, corresponding addresses and additional information (if available).
Once a new batch of names from FinCEN is received, it is automatically uploaded into the Fincom’s system via already available batch upload API.
The system creates a transactions database with a 6-months sliding window resolution. This database is maintained in a phonetic form. It is ready for the 314(a) test at any given moment. The initial database includes the existing 6-months transactions.
New transactions will be automatically added to the database, while every day transactions from one day outside the sliding window will be erased, and transaction from one consequent day will be added.
The system creates a database of all accounts current accounts. The database is automatically updated each time a new account is added (customer onboarding) or deprecated. The sliding window of 12 months is managed as described above.
Every two weeks, once the Financial Institution receives a batch of names from FinCEN for further screening, this batch shall be uploaded into the System via available Batch-upload API. The data from the batch will then be screened against two data sources: 6-months transaction database and 12-month customer accounts/names database. The matching entries will be isolated into a separate list for reporting.
The system automatically generates a corresponding report. The report with the resulting matches will be timestamped, logged and available for download via Results API.