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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 26, 2007 CONTACT: Office of Public Affairs (703) 905-3770


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 26, 2007
CONTACT: Office of Public Affairs
(703) 905-3770

FinCEN Delays Implementation of Revised Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) Forms

Financial Institutions Should File Using Current Forms Until Further Notice

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) today filed a
Federal Register notice

announcing the delayed implementation of certain revised Suspicious Activity Report (SAR)
forms that were scheduled to become effective on June 30, 2007. The agency is withdrawing this
effective date for the revised SAR forms for depository institutions, casinos and card clubs,
insurance companies, and the securities and futures industries. FinCEN will establish new
effective and mandatory compliance dates for these revised forms in a future notice. The delay
does not impact ongoing suspicious activity reporting, which will continue using the current
forms.

FinCEN, in cooperation with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), recently initiated an
information-technology modernization strategy that includes a newly-established Bank Secrecy
Act (BSA) data quality management program to further ensure that the data is accurate, complete
and available in a timely manner to law enforcement agencies and financial institution regulators.
Program staff re-examined many legacy data management protocols and discovered problems
that, if not corrected, could continue to adversely impact how certain limited information sets are
loaded into the database. As a result, FinCEN and the IRS have agreed to focus on optimizing
the current database environment prior to introducing any new products or procedures.

As FinCEN and the IRS move forward with this optimization process, we need to be vigilant in
monitoring for any transitional problems that may arise. This modernization strategy affirms our
responsibility to make the financial sectors contributions to law enforcement and national
security most useful, said Ed Dorris, FinCENs Chief Information Officer. This temporary
delay allows FinCEN, working with the IRS, to make certain that the data protocol issues are
addressed before accepting the new SAR format. It is also very important that financial
institutions receive as much notice as possible to make business decisions based on our
deadlines.

IRS Chief Information Officer Richard Spires noted, The IRS and FinCEN are working
collaboratively to identify issues and implement improvements to strengthen the reliability of the
BSA data.

This announcement does not affect the BSA filing requirements, and financial institutions should
continue filing using the current SAR forms. The delay of the SAR forms for depository
institutions, casinos and card clubs, insurance companies, and the securities and futures
industries does not alter the effective date of the revised forms for money services businesses,
which became effective on March 31, 2007 and will become mandatory October 1, 2007.

FinCEN has alerted BSA data users, such as the law enforcement community and regulators, of
the data protocol issues and is providing information on the actions that have been taken to
address them. As FinCEN and the IRS continue to pursue their data-quality management
objectives, they will advise database users of pending adjustments to ensure that the system
retains its superior investigatory value.

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