On December 1, 2015, the New York State Department of Financial Services proposed a new anti-terrorism and anti- money laundering regulation, known as the Transaction Monitoring and Filtering Program regulation. The main requirements of the proposed regulation include maintenance by each regulated institution of (i) a transaction monitoring program for the purpose of monitoring transactions after their execution for potential BSA/AML violations and suspicious activity reporting and (ii) a watch list filtering program to prevent transactions, before their execution, that are prohibited by applicable sanctions, including OFAC and other sanctions lists, politically exposed persons lists, and internal watch lists. The proposed regulation sets forth additional minimum requirements for each institution's Transaction Monitoring and Filtering Program and also includes an annual certification requirement, modeled on Sarbanes-Oxley, that senior financial executives must certify that their institutions have necessary systems in place to identify and prevent illicit transactions.
The regulation will published in the New York State Register, commencing a 45-day notice and comment period.
The NYDFS press release is available at: http://www.dfs.ny.gov/about/press/pr1512011.htm and the proposed Transaction Monitoring and Filtering Program regulation is available at: http://www.dfs.ny.gov/legal/regulations/proposed/rp504t.pdf.
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