H.R. 533 — Bank Privacy Reform Act

This section amends the Right to Financial Privacy Act of 1978 to require a search warrant meeting specified requirements for any government authority to access or obtain copies of, or information from, a customer's financial records held by a financial institution (previously permitted without warrants via subpoenas, summonses, and other procedures under stricken sections 1104, 1105, 1107, 1108, and 1114, and stricken subsections (c) through (r) of section 1113) and makes conforming amendments to sections 1109 and 1113. This section further revises the Bank Secrecy Act (chapter 53 of title 31, U.S. Code)—the primary U.S. anti-money laundering and financial crime reporting regime—to (1) limit its purpose to requiring financial institutions to retain (but not report) transaction records identifiable to particular customers; (2) strike multiple sections mandating reports and recordkeeping for currency transactions (5313), foreign financial accounts and transactions (5314, 5315), structuring to evade requirements (5324), beneficial ownership and aggregation rules (5326), suspicious activities by nonfinancial businesses (5331, 5332), and special measures against foreign jurisdictions (5318A); (3) eliminate various exceptions to compliance programs, penalties (sections 5321 and 5322), and customer due diligence rules (5330 and 5335); (4) index the $3,000 threshold in section 5325(a) for reporting certain international monetary instrument transfers to annual Consumer Price Index adjustments; (5) strike subchapter III regulating money transmitting businesses; and (6) make conforming amendments to sections 5312, 5318, and the table of contents. (Thus, financial institutions retain obligations to maintain certain compliance programs and suspicious activity reports under section 5318(g), but most mandatory reporting to the government ends.)