Bank of America agreed to a consent order with the OCC over deficiencies in the Bank Secrecy Act

Bank of America (BAC-1.32%) agreed to a consent order with the Comptroller of the Currency official on Monday to address deficiencies in its anti-money laundering practices.

The second-largest U.S. bank by assets agreed to address lapses related to the timely filing of suspicious activity reports and to address a previously identified deficiency related to its customer due diligence processes, the OCC said in a statement release.

Bank of America has not admitted or denied the allegations, nor has it imposed any fine. Instead, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company must take a series of steps to improve compliance. This includes developing plans for screening new customers and conducting risk assessments, as well as engaging an independent consultant to ensure suspicious activity is reported correctly.

“We have worked closely with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency over the past year to improve our anti-money laundering and sanctions programs,” Bank of America said in a statement. “The work we have done to date enables us to implement the requirements of the consent order.”

These activities fall under the requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act, which was first created in 1970 to help financial institutions detect and prevent money laundering through their systems Anti-money laundering or AML laws. According to the law, all financial institutions follow a set of guidelines known as KYC (Know Your Customer/Client) – a process these companies use to verify the identity of potential customers and the risks involved.

The OCC also said it found deficiencies in Bank of America’s internal controls, governance, independent testing and training components of its BSA compliance program.

In a quarterly regulatory filing in October, the bank said it had implemented improvements to Bank Secrecy Act programs and would continue to do so. Based on discussions with regulators, the bank said it does not expect the issues related to these programs to have a material adverse financial impact.

This comes just over two months after TD Bank (TD+0.04%) was hit with one Record penalty about his failure to curb financial crime in its systems. In October, Canada’s second-largest bank, the largest bank in U.S. history, pleaded guilty to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act program and became the first to plead guilty to conspiracy to launder money.

Over the course of six years, TD Bank failed to monitor $18.3 trillion in customer activity in the United States. In its plea agreement, TD Bank admitted that this allowed three money laundering networks to transfer over $670 million through the bank’s accounts.

The bank agreed pay a record sum of 1.3 billion US dollars to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued a cease and desist order and a $450 million civil penalty on TD Bank on Thursday for its inadequate Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance programs. And the Federal Reserve Board imposed one Fine of $123.5 million.