Home > Regulation & Examinations > Laws & Regulations > FDIC Federal Register Citations |
|||
FDIC Federal Register Citations Iowa State Bank & Trust
From: Shari DeMaris [mailto:sdemaris@isbt.com] Re: EGRPRA Request for Burden reduction Recommendations Ladies and Gentlemen:
We appreciate the opportunity to comment on reducing
regulatory burden from money laundering, safety and soundness, and
securities rules. Iowa State Bank & Trust Co. is a $545-million community
bank with seven locations in four cities in eastern Iowa. The FDIC is our
primary regulator. Currency Transaction Reports The current threshold for filing Currency Transaction Reports is too low. The threshold of $10,000 for cash transactions and $3,000 for monetary instruments have not been adjusted for inflation since the inception of the rules approximately 30 years ago. The current levels are not indicative of large transactions today.
We recommend raising the threshold for cash transactions to
$25,000 and the threshold for monetary instruments to $10,000.
Since we must conduct an annual review of exempt persons to
determine that they remain eligible for exemption, the biennial reviews seem
redundant, particularly when the exempt persons business, transactions and
financial products/services have not substantially changed from the initial
designation. We recommend elimination of the biennial filing and that a
subsequent filing be required only when there is a substantive change from
the initial designation. We would benefit from being able to obtain a listing of all CTRs and SARs that have been filed with the IRS Detroit Computing Center on annual basis. This information is available to our examiners and would be invaluable to us in conducting internal audits and in preparation for a visit by our examiners. Monitory of High Risk Customers
We would request additional, specific guidance from the
regulators surrounding the identification of high risk customers and the
subsequent monitoring of such accounts. Our current system vendor is not
equipped to provide assistance; in addition, we are not in a position to
purchase a separate system to accomplish this task.
We would request that the regulators give clear and definite
guidance as to what is required in the narrative section of a SAR. Banks
would benefit from a uniform, easily completed form for reporting suspicious
activity that specifies the detail required to give law enforcement
sufficient evidence.
We have specific requirements for a customer to change the
address of record attached to his/her accounts. Changes of address
require the customer to come to the bank, produce a picture ID and sign a
change of address form. Our tellers are required to document this ID
information, and the fact that it was verified. Privacy NoticesThe annual privacy notice that banks must send to customers is not only burdensome and costly, but the language required is confusing to customers. We recommend that the annual mailing requirement be eliminated and, instead, the requirement should be for a new notice to be delivered to consumers only when there is a substantial change in the banks policy. Electronic Funds Transfers (Regulation E)
Consumer liability from unauthorized transactions resulting
from writing their personal identification number on a card or keeping the
PIN in the same location, as the card should be increased from $50 to $500.
It is unfair for banks to be presumed liable in every instance for
unauthorized electronic transactions. Consideration should also be given to
shifting a portion of the responsibility to merchants who accept
signature-based transactions requiring the merchant to verify the customers
signature; if they fail to verify the signature, they should be held
accountable.
The current application the FDICIA rules to institutions that
are less than $1 billion in assets and are not publicly traded is extremely
burdensome. We would support raising the FDICIA internal-control reporting
threshold under Part 363 to $1 billion in assets for non-publicly traded
banks.
As the number of regulations facing the banking industry
increases, so does the overall cost of compliance. There is not any one
regulation that community banks are unable to comply with it is the
cumulative effect of all regulations that is so onerous. Even though each
new requirement may be designed to address a particular problem, over time
it all adds up to an unwieldy burden. With the complexity and volume of new
regulations coupled with the lack of consistent guidance from regulators,
financial institutions can never be certain of whether they are adequately
complying with ever-changing and increasing requirements.
Shari DeMaris
|
Last Updated 05/03/2005 | regs@fdic.gov |