The US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has created a platform to facilitate information sharing on financial crime issues including anti-money laundering (AML) efforts.

FinCEN Exchange is designed to share information more dynamically and seeks to formalise relations between government agencies and financial institutions.

Last year the US treasury said it intended to institutionalise partnerships between financial institutions and public bodies that share information to crack down on financial crime (Trade-based Financial Crime, 6 December 2017).

Valuable tool

FinCEN has conducted special briefings for approximately 40 financial institutions and law enforcement agencies since 2015.

In several ways, the FinCEN Exchange mirrors the UK’s Joint Money Laundering Intelligence Taskforce. It was established in 2016 and is widely recognised by both industry participants and law enforcement agencies as a valuable tool in curbing trade-based financial crime and other AML activities.

The FinCEN Exchange provides an additional tool for the industry to obtain information from the government to identify AML risks.

Briefing support

To support the exchange, FinCEN is planning periodic briefings between treasury, law enforcement and industry participants to identify and exchange information on targeted threats such as money laundering methods.

Which industry participants will be selected to join the platform is yet to be finalised, but invitations will likely be based on the size of the financial institutions and the type of information they may be able to share with other FinCEN Exchange participants.