# Bank Secrecy Act Suspicious Activity Report **Entity class:** Financial regulatory report **Domain:** Anti-money laundering / financial intelligence / law enforcement **Doc Type:** Operational Mechanism Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition A **Bank Secrecy Act Suspicious Activity Report (BSA SAR)** is a confidential report filed by a covered financial institution when activity meets applicable suspicious-transaction reporting criteria. It is submitted to [[wiki/Financial Crimes Enforcement Network|FinCEN]] and can support financial-crime, money-laundering, terrorist-financing, regulatory, intelligence, and national-security work. ## Report Versus Underlying Record The SAR is the institution's report of facts and suspicion; it is not a judicial finding and does not itself prove criminal or terrorist conduct. Supporting documentation can include transaction records, account-opening information, correspondence, recordings, and other business records used to reach the filing decision. The institution generally retains that supporting material and must provide it when properly requested under BSA rules. This distinction locates the data precisely. FinCEN maintains the filed BSA report. Banks, issuers, processors, or other institutions may retain the detailed commercial records. Investigators connect the layers through authorized access, FinCEN processes, or applicable legal process. ## Not an ISE-SAR A BSA SAR concerns financial activity. It is distinct from the behavioral or incident-oriented [[wiki/Suspicious Activity Reporting|Suspicious Activity Reporting]] used by fusion centers and the Information Sharing Environment, even though both use the acronym **SAR**. One can become corroborating context for the other only through an authorized, documented information-sharing path. ## Sources / Provenance - [FinCEN — SAR supporting documentation](https://www.fincen.gov/resources/statutes-regulations/guidance/suspicious-activity-report-supporting-documentation) - [FinCEN — what is BSA data](https://www.fincen.gov/resources/bank-secrecy-act-filing-information/what-bsa-data) ## Relationships - **filed under:** [[wiki/Bank Secrecy Act|Bank Secrecy Act]]. - **received and protected by:** [[wiki/Financial Crimes Enforcement Network|Financial Crimes Enforcement Network]]. - **can support:** [[wiki/Financial Intelligence|Financial Intelligence]] and [[wiki/Terrorist Financing|terrorist-financing]] investigations. - **distinct from:** [[wiki/Suspicious Activity Reporting|ISE and fusion-center Suspicious Activity Reporting]].