FFIECFederal Financial Institutions Examination Council
A US interagency body, established in 1979, that prescribes uniform principles, standards and report forms for the federal examination of financial institutions. Its members are the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the State Liaison Committee. The FFIEC publishes the BSA/AML Examination Manual, which keeps AML examinations consistent across agencies.
Why it matters
The FFIEC does not examine banks itself. Its member agencies do, and the Council's role is to make sure they assess institutions the same way. For AML teams, its most important output is the BSA/AML Examination Manual, developed with FinCEN, which describes how examiners review a bank's risk assessment, internal controls, independent testing, BSA officer, training, customer due diligence and suspicious activity monitoring.
Because examiners from every member agency work from the same manual, it is the practical reference for what a defensible program looks like: documented risk-based decisions, monitoring that matches the institution's risk profile, and alert investigations that can be reconstructed during an exam.
The manual is updated section by section rather than rewritten. Examination expectations are expected to shift again after FinCEN and the federal banking agencies proposed new AML/CFT program rules in April 2026, which focus on program effectiveness over technical, check-the-box compliance.
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