AML

Former Fed Chair Janet Yellen told senators that as Treasury secretary she would create a “hub” to examine the effects of a changing climate on financial institutions and create a database of companies' true owners as required by a recent anti-money-laundering bill.

Congress acted first when it freed financial firms from having to disclose the beneficial owners of commercial clients. Now it's time for regulators to further ease anti-money-laundering reporting requirements by freeing them from filing duplicative or unnecessary suspicious activity reports.

With the new Congress sworn in, trade associations are already pushing their legislative wish lists, including more regulatory oversight of fintechs and protecting the industry's tax exemption.

An impasse over pandemic relief checks for Americans is holding up an override of President Trump's veto of a bill shifting beneficial-owner requirements from banks to their commercial clients.

Congress’s passage of a measure requiring startup companies — instead of their banks — to identify true owners was arguably the industry’s biggest legislative achievement in 2020. Now the industry is urging lawmakers to revisit proposals that would ease other anti-money-laundering reporting requirements.