Thursday, March 28, 2013
Calvery said in fall 2012, FinCEN began rolling out a key component in the agency's IT Modernization Program to improve its ability to conduct analysis of the reports and make its data available to federal and state agencies, including law enforcement and regulators. Using FinCEN Query on the agency's website, such entities can access and analyze 11 years of data compiled by FinCEN.
Calvery said the compilation process involves FinCEN analysts sifting through data from the millions of reports that FIs send to FinCEN annually. "For example, our advanced data matching algorithms have allowed us to increase match rates between CMIRs [reports of international transportation of currency or monetary instruments], CTRs, and SARs by over 50 percent in some jurisdictions," she noted. "This gives us insight into dollar flow from a foreign jurisdiction to the point the dollars are deposited into a U.S. bank, from which we can work to ultimately identify the foreign beneficiary of a wire emanating from the account."
Calvery pointed out that FinCEN analysts have also developed a tool that uses "red flag" financial indicators to assist the agency in identifying money services business agents, such as money transfer providers, that are acting as third-party money launderers. 
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