Home | Contact the OCC | Directory | Subject Index | Site Map | Privacy and Security | Accessibility

Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) Program

Background

This page provides a link that allows banks and other filers to download software for use in preparing and filing Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR). Under 12 CFR 21, national banks are required to report known or suspected criminal offenses, at specified thresholds, or transactions over $5,000 that they suspect involve money laundering or violate the Bank Secrecy Act. Similar regulations by other regulators apply to other financial institutions.

To make that report, the filing institution prepares a SAR, which it files with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the Department of the Treasury through the IRS Detroit Computing Center. The reports are then made available electronically to appropriate law enforcement agencies.

Electronic Filing

The federal financial institutions regulators and FinCEN strongly encourage filers to use the SAR software and to file electronically.

Filing on Paper

Banks that do not wish to file by disk, however, may continue to file paper-based reports. FinCEN has made copies of the forms available for download in Adobe Acrobat portable document format (PDF). The Acrobat viewer is available free from Adobe in versions for different platforms.

Filing SARs Using the SAR Software

Filing SARs using the SAR software is easy and advantageous. Using the SAR software speeds the preparation of SARs and provides more accurate and timely information to government authorities. A single disk filed may include more than one SAR.

NOTE: The printed form generated by the SAR software is not an acceptable form for paper-based filing with FinCEN. That form is intended for the filer's internal records only.

You are entering an official United States government system, which may be used only for authorized purposes. Unauthorized modification of any information stored on this system may result in criminal prosecution.