The FinCEN Exchange is FinCEN’s voluntary public-private information sharing partnership among law enforcement, financial institutions, and FinCEN aimed at effectively and efficiently combating money laundering, terrorism financing, organized crime, and other financial crimes; protecting the financial system from illicit use; and promoting national security. FinCEN believes that financial information sharing is most effective when information flows in both directions between the public and private sectors in specific authorized ways. Operating under FinCEN’s legal authority under 31 U.S.C. § 310(b)(2)(E), as well as other authorities (“FinCEN authorities”), FinCEN created the FinCEN Exchange to provide financial institutions with additional information about priority issues on a more regularized and frequent basis. Providing financial institutions with key government-provided information allows financial institutions to focus on specific illicit finance and national security threats under their existing Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) compliance obligations and, when appropriate, file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs). In turn, this increased reporting assists FinCEN and law enforcement in detecting, preventing, and prosecuting terrorism, organized crime, money laundering, and other financial crimes.
Pursuant to its FinCEN authorities, FinCEN is authorized to furnish research, analytical, and informational services to financial institutions in the interest of detection, prevention, and prosecution of terrorism, organized crime, weapons proliferation, money laundering, and other financial crimes. Pursuant to this goal, FinCEN intends to leverage the private sector’s existing anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) compliance programs by: 1) providing a program for sharing specific law enforcement-approved information and FinCEN information to financial institution participants; 2) receiving better quality and more useful information via SARs from financial institution participants that are equipped with government-provided information, feedback, and analysis; and 3) providing new typology information to the broader financial sector gained through FinCEN Exchange, as appropriate.
FinCEN will continue to work with law enforcement, financial institutions, and other regulatory agencies to develop, grow, and refine FinCEN Exchange so that the program and FinCEN continue to provide effective and innovative public-private information sharing on priority illicit finance and national security challenges.
For additional information about FinCEN Exchange, please see Treasury’s press release and Under Secretary Sigal Mandelker’s December 4, 2017 speech in which she publicly announced the launch of FinCEN Exchange.