Fulton in Pa. freed from several BSA consent orders

Fulton Financial in Lancaster, Pa., has been freed from several consent orders tied to its Bank Secrecy Act compliance.

The $20 billion-asset company said in a press release Monday that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency terminated orders against three of its banks.

While the orders were not identical, they were broadly similar. Each required Fulton’s banks — Swineford National Bank, Fulton National Bank and FNB Bank — to appoint members to a corporate-level compliance committee, identify high-risk clients and improve suspicious-activity reporting.

"We are pleased with this acknowledgement of the significant progress we have made in strengthening our BSA/AML compliance programs and remediating the deficiencies identified in the OCC Consent Orders,” Philip Wenger, Fulton’s chairman and CEO, said in the release.

“We continue to work diligently to achieve a similar resolution with respect to the BSA/AML enforcement actions issued to our other bank subsidiaries,” Wenger added.

Fulton and its Lafayette Ambassador Bank in Bethlehem, Pa., still have BSA-related consent orders with the Federal Reserve. Columbia Bank in Columbia, Md., is working through an order with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money-laundering compliance issues have dogged a number of other banks in recent years, including BB&T in Winston-Salem, N.C.; Investors Bancorp in Short Hills, N.J.; Carter Bank and Trust in Martinsville, Va.; and Ameris Bancorp in Moultrie, Ga.

BSA-AML issues recently forced Washington Federal in Seattle to terminate its $63.9 million agreement to buy Anchor Bancorp in Lacey, Wash.