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Ahead of a House Financial Services subcommittee hearing this week evaluating the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), America’s Credit Unions is urged lawmakers to update decades-old reporting thresholds that govern Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) and Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs).
In a letter to committee leaders, President/CEO Jim Nussle endorsed the Financial Reporting Threshold Modernization Act (H.R. 1799), introduced by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.). The legislation would raise the CTR threshold from $10,000 to $30,000, increase the SAR threshold from $5,000 to $10,000 and require periodic inflation adjustments for CTRs.
“Such increases would be conservative, appropriate and more properly strike a balance between what is helpful to law enforcement and the compliance burden for credit unions,” Nussle wrote. He added that America’s Credit Unions “further supports streamlining CTR and SAR data fields to reduce redundancies, eliminate confusion, and allow the use of templates for common or recurring typologies.”
Nussle identified CTR aggregation as a persistent challenge for credit unions, calling the tracking “an often manual, resource-intensive process” that strains operational capacity.
The trade group has repeatedly pressed Congress and regulators on the issue. Nussle previously asked the House Rules Committee to add Loudermilk’s modernization measure to the National Defense Authorization Act. In August, America’s Credit Unions was the only credit union organization invited to a Treasury Department roundtable that included representatives from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.
Compliance head Marilyn Barker and Senior Regulatory Counsel Luke Martone represented the group at those discussions.
“Modernizing these thresholds is long overdue,” Nussle said. “Doing so will help credit unions better serve their members while maintaining strong support for law enforcement.”
America’s Credit Unions pledged to continue working with Congress and Treasury to ease outdated compliance burdens while ensuring the financial system remains secure.
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