WASHINGTON - The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency plans to roll out a pilot program in the next few weeks that would require examiners to perform independent money-laundering risk assessments on banks.
But industry officials are already concerned the plan could lead to more regulatory second-guessing.
The agency said it hopes the program, which would initially involve nearly a dozen unidentified institutions, will serve as a template for similar assessments of all national banks beginning in the fourth quarter.
"The idea is to get a better handle on where the risks are," said Daniel P. Stipano, deputy chief counsel of the OCC, in an interview. "It's a tool for us to better identify those banks that have heightened Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money-laundering risk."
Under the program, examiners would have to spell out specific customer, service, product, and geographic money-laundering risks faced by each bank and then compare the data with the bank's internal assessment.
The agency announced the plan with no fanfare this week in a two-page "emergency processing procedure" out for comment until Aug. 24. Mr. Stipano said it wanted to begin the pilot program immediately and a normal comment period could delay it by months.
Industry representatives are eyeing the plan cautiously because the OCC has divulged little detail about how the assessments would be conducted and what would happen if examiners reached different conclusions than banks about money-laundering risks.
Bankers complain that examiners second-guess individual decisions such as when to file suspicious-activity reports, and some representatives said they are concerned the program could lead to more problems.
"What we want to see is that there is deference given to the bank's internal assessment if it differs from that of the examiner," said John Byrne, director of the American Bankers Association's Center for Regulatory Compliance.
Mr. Stipano estimated that banks would spend 10 additional hours a year to comply with the new program. He argued the risk assessments would actually aid banks, especially small and midsize ones, because examiners would share their findings.
Industry observers said it was hard to tell exactly what the OCC intends to do because the request for comment was vague.
"It is very difficult to infer what this would mean," said Karen Shaw Petrou, whose firm, Federal Financial Analytics Inc., was the first to spot the announcement.
The program is part of a revamp of the agency's anti-money-laundering enforcement practices. Congress has put increasing pressure on the OCC and other banking agencies to strengthen their policies following anti-laundering deficiencies uncovered at Riggs National Corp. last year. Banks have argued that regulators have established a zero-tolerance policy for mistakes.
In July, however, the OCC released an internal review of its anti-laundering enforcement that said 22% of surveyed national banks cited for violations had failed to correct them. It also said that despite improvements, its oversight of anti-laundering issues was only "marginally adequate."
Mr. Stipano said the new risk assessment was a direct response to some of the criticisms leveled in the report.
It also coincides with federal bank and thrift guidelines released in June that said regulators would check on banks' internal risk assessments.
"If the organization has not developed a risk assessment, or if it is considered inadequate, then the examiner must complete a risk assessment," a supplement to the new guidelines said.
