FedACH^® Services

Need help complying with ACH rules and regulations?

September 2010

Having the appropriate procedures in place to support compliance with industry rules is critical. Ensuring that your institution incorporates these regulations into its day-to-day processes is as important as the payments and services you offer to your customers. Knowing the importance our customers place on compliance, the Federal Reserve Banks offer a suite of FedACH Services tools to help automate and support your internal processes.

 

Streamline returns reporting to meet the “one percent rule”

The new Return Ratio Report (PDF), available via the FedEDI^® Plus Service, is designed to help originating depository financial institutions (ODFIs) and their originators monitor return activity and to assist ODFIs in meeting the ACH Rules (Off-site Link) requirement regarding return item activity, often referred to as the “one percent rule.”

The Return Ratio Report generates key return item information such as value and item counts by Standard Entry Class (SEC) code for the specified originators’ Company IDs and percent of value forward items returned. Authorized users can also customize the report based on key processing criteria, reporting frequency, date range and more. This report is available to FedEDI Plus customers and provides easy access to the features you need to help streamline your institution’s return reporting.

Monitor exposure limits to adhere to the risk management rule

The Risk Management and Assessment Rule, implemented in June 2010 by NACHA, strengthens requirements for monitoring automated clearing house (ACH) origination risk. The FedACH Risk^® Origination Monitoring Service is available to assist your institution’s risk management efforts by providing a two-pronged approach to managing risk. The service monitors exposure limits through debit and/or credit caps on origination — either for the entire ODFI routing transit number (RTN) or for designated company IDs. It also has the ability to set these monitoring caps across multiple exposure days. Requiring monitoring diligence across more than a single day reflects a risk management best practice.

Identify IAT activity to comply with OFAC regulations

Following the implementation of the International ACH Transaction (IAT) rule in 2009 all receiving depository financial institutions (RDFIs) may receive inbound cross-border payments, and must ensure that all aspects of IAT transactions are in compliance with Office of Foreign Assets Control (Off-site Link) (OFAC) regulations.

We offer two tools to help RDFIs easily identify IAT items to begin the required due diligence processes:

• IAT Output File Sort (PDF) - Allows RDFIs to receive their forward IAT items (not IAT returns) in a separate file that does not include domestic items. This feature helps streamline processing of incoming files by eliminating the need to examine the entire output file for IAT items.
• IAT Report (PDF) - Displays all IAT items for a given business day at both the RDFI and corporate customer level, enabling RDFIs to better respond to IAT-related customer inquiries. Reports may be sorted by settlement date and will include OFAC screening results at the top to help identify suspect IAT transactions. This report is available via the FedEDI Plus Service.

Streamline your compliance processes today

For more information about these reports and services, please visit the FedACH Services page of our website. Your FedACH sales specialist can also provide more information about all of our FedACH offerings and can assist you in setting up these services for your institution.

Top of Page