Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q. How is the ‘Financial Crimes Research Center’ different from other software companies?

We are not a software company, we do not sell software. We use our tools to monitor for Possible Suspicious Activity, we then research all exceptions and if warranted we will draft the Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) for you, and send it to you for final disposition.

Q. Do you replace my BSA Compliance Officer?

Absolutely not, we are merely replacing all of the AML software, hardware, and maintenance costs you incur to comply with AML regulations. Outsourcing the monitoring to the FCRC will still require your BSA Officer to make the final decision to file a SAR or not. We also draft CTR’s, prepare your FinCEN314a responses, prepare transaction based subpoena responses and prepare any other Government reporting requests for your institution. We will not file any of these requests; we will prepare them and send them to your institution’s BSA Officer for approval and final disposition.

Q. How can you research our institution’s Possible Suspicious Activity?

The first part of our process is to validate your Risk Assessment, Customer Information Program (CIP), Customer Due Diligence (CDD) Process and your Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) Process. We then interface these processes with us. This interface along with the interface of your transactional data will allow us to know most of what you know about your Customers. We will maintain a Customer Information File (CIF) on all of your Customers and use this and other information we obtain to research every exemption (or Possible Suspicious Activity). If we cannot legitimize the Activity we will draft a SAR and send it to your institution.

Q. Does our financial institution need to worry about software updates and technology changes?

No, by Outsourcing the Suspicious Activity Monitoring to the Financial Crimes Research Center, you no longer need to worry about software updates and changes. Your institution is alleviated from product training due to software changes or added costs due to product upgrades.

Q. Is this safe, will our data be secure?

Yes. The Monitoring and Research part of our center is not on-line, there is no physical access from the outside world to our monitoring and research systems. All of our employees are legal residents of the U.S. and go through a very extensive back ground check. All employees go through daily screening and constant observation. They are not allowed to take anything into or out of the center. We use a secure push pull FTP process that must be initiated by the financial institution. We have many other security measures that we do not publish publicly and some of which our customers will never know. Security is the number one duty of all Financial Crimes Research Center personnel; we have a zero tolerance policy on all security measures.

Q. Does the FCRC retain our institutions Customer Account Activity for 5 years as required by the FFIEC?

Yes, our system settings conforms to the FFIEC handbook. We stay on top of the regulations and adapt if the retention period increases.

Q. This must cost a million dollars, right?

No, we have a onetime low setup fee to do the interfacing and then your investment is based on the number of customers you have, billed monthly. Your cost per customer per month is less than the cost of a US Postal Stamp. There are no other costs for our services.

Q. How do we advise the regulators on what customer activity is being monitored?

Once an FCRC customer, our implementation team will meet with the bank and choose only those models from our arsenal of models that relate to their type of banking institution, plus our global models. Descriptions of these models can be maintained and provided to the regulators, when necessary and of course regulators will have access to our center should they need it.

Q. Where are you located?

We are located in the United States, only our Customer’s Management know exactly where. This is one of our security measures, we don’t publicly publish our address.

Q. Do you conduct AML Look-Backs for FCRC customers only?

We perform AML Look-Backs for NON-Customers of FCRC only.

Q. Can our institution e-File completed SAR and CTR forms received from FCRC?

Yes, SAR and CTRs created from our research process will be checked for correctness and submitted to assigned personnel at your institution. This individual will be responsible for reviewing and uploading to websites or mailing the SAR and CTRs appropriately.

Q. How will training be provided?

Remember by Outsourcing your Suspicious Activity Monitoring to the FCRC, you need not worry about training. The value-add for outsourcing is that no software is necessary to run at your institution. The only training necessary which can be provided by your institutions Compliance Officer, is to review the SAR and CTRs we send you for correctness and e-file.

Q. Do we notify you if our institution is merging with another?

Yes it is very important that we are notified in advance of a bank merger. The Non-FCRC bank must go through our standard initial setup which requires meetings to understand and review bank data for import into FCRC’s databases.

Call (866) 852 3410 We Can Help. info@financialcrimesresearchcenter.com

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