Does Your US Company Need an AML Program?

An AML program, short for anti-money laundering, is the set of written policies, controls and checks a company uses to keep its operations from being used to launder money or move funds for sanctioned parties. US law requires a formal program only from businesses it classes as financial institutions. Every other US company still carries part of the obligation: cash reporting and economic sanctions apply to all of them, and banks apply their own program to their business clients.

Many founders in Latin America assume this is a matter for banks and exchange houses. It usually becomes their matter the day the bank asks where a transfer came from, holds an international payment, or writes to say the account will be closed. At that point the question is no longer whether the law obliges the company, but whether the company can show it knows who it does business with.

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01What Does an AML Program Contain?

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the Treasury, administers the Bank Secrecy Act, the federal law behind the US anti-money laundering regime. Each regulated industry has its own rule, but the core pieces repeat:

• Risk assessment: a written analysis of how the company's products, clients, channels and countries expose it to laundering or sanctions risk.
• Internal policies and controls: written procedures that answer those specific risks, not generic ones.
• A compliance officer: a person with the authority, time and resources to run the program day to day.
• Training: periodic and suited to each person's role.
• Independent testing: a review by someone who neither designed nor runs the program.
• Customer due diligence: identifying and verifying clients, counterparties and their beneficial owners.

The order matters. Policies written before a risk assessment are, at best, decoration.

02Which Companies Are Required by Law to Have One?

Those the Bank Secrecy Act treats as financial institutions. FinCEN's own list has eleven categories, each with its program rule:

• Banks and credit unions.
• Money services businesses: money transmitters, currency exchangers, check cashers, providers and sellers of prepaid access, and many platforms that transmit virtual currency.
• Broker-dealers, mutual funds, and futures commission merchants and introducing brokers.
• Insurance companies, for covered products such as permanent life policies and annuities.
• Casinos and card clubs.
• Dealers in precious metals, stones or jewels that bought and sold more than $50,000 of covered goods in the prior year.
• Loan or finance companies, which includes non-bank residential mortgage lenders and originators.
• Operators of credit card systems and the housing government-sponsored enterprises.

Investment advisers registered with the SEC were added in 2024, but FinCEN delayed that rule. It now takes effect on January 1, 2028.

For founders, the category that matters most is the money services business. A company that moves money for others must register with FinCEN within 180 days of being established, keep a written AML program, and in most states hold a state money transmitter license. The usual trap is a payments, remittance or crypto startup that describes itself as a technology company and learns, when it opens a bank account or raises capital, that regulators see a money transmitter. That classification is worth settling before launch, with counsel.

03If My Company Is Not a Financial Institution, What Still Applies?

Three obligations reach every US business, including an LLC whose owner lives abroad.

• Cash reporting: a business that receives more than $10,000 in cash, in one transaction or in related ones, files Form 8300 with the IRS within 15 days. Payments from the same payer within 24 hours count as related, and some cashier's checks and money orders count as cash.
• Structuring: breaking payments up to stay under that threshold is a separate federal crime, for the business and for the payer.
• Sanctions: rules of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) bind every US person, and a company organized in the United States is one, wherever its owner lives. It may not deal with sanctioned people, companies or countries.

Since April 24, 2024, the government has ten years, up from five, to bring a case for violations of the main sanctions laws, IEEPA and the Trading with the Enemy Act. A transaction from 2020 can still be examined today.

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04Why Do Banks Ask for This From a Company That Is Not Regulated?

Because the bank is regulated, and it answers to its examiners for every client it keeps. A US company with foreign owners, frequent international transfers or clients in countries the bank considers higher risk is a relationship the bank must be able to justify. When it cannot, the simplest answer is to close the account.

A company that can show its own controls reduces that friction: a file on each significant client, a record of who the beneficial owners are, a sanctions check before a new counterparty, and an explanation of the source of funds ready before the bank asks. The same file is what an investor or a buyer will request in due diligence, and with the ten-year window, they now look further back. Our guide on why US banks reject non-residents covers the bank's side.

05What Are the Signs a Company Already Needs Formal Controls?

• The bank has asked for the origin of a transfer from Latin America, and there is no organized file on that client or that operation.
• The business model moves money for third parties, and no one has decided whether it is a money services business.
• The company receives payments from parties other than the client it invoiced, or sells to buyers in countries under active sanctions programs.
• The business receives cash or cash equivalents, such as a dealership, a real estate office or a jeweler, with no clear procedure for Form 8300.
• The company is preparing a capital raise or a sale, and the other side has asked for compliance policies.

Three questions are a fair test. Can you show who the beneficial owner of each significant client is? Do you know whether any client or supplier appears on a sanctions list? Is there a record of how the company reached those decisions? If any answer is no, or not sure, the exposure is already there.

06Why Is a Template Not Enough?

Regulators and banks do not ask whether a company has an AML manual. They ask whether the controls work. FinCEN's proposed rule of April 10, 2026 makes that explicit: it would require a program to be established, meaning reasonably designed from the company's own risk assessment, and then maintained, meaning implemented in all material respects. It also says a compliance officer with conflicting responsibilities that weaken that role generally would not meet the standard.

• A program on paper is downloaded or adapted from another company. An effective one is built on the company's own risk assessment.
• A program on paper lists generic warning signs. An effective one calibrates alerts to the real products, clients and countries.
• A program on paper names the owner as compliance officer, with no time or training. An effective one gives that person authority and resources.
• A program on paper is never reviewed. An effective one changes when the business changes, and is tested by someone independent.

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07What Changed in 2026?

• AML program reform: FinCEN proposed it in April 2026 and comments closed June 9. There is no final rule yet, and FinCEN proposed that it take effect 12 months after it is issued.
• Investment advisers: the AML rule now starts January 1, 2028.
• BOI reporting: the final rule, issued August 11, 2026 and effective August 14, keeps US-formed companies exempt. Foreign companies registered to do business in the US still report their non-US beneficial owners. See the BOI report in 2026.
• Residential real estate reporting: a federal court in Texas vacated the rule on March 19, 2026. FinCEN is appealing, so for now no report is required, but the rule could return.

The direction is not that obligations are relaxing. It is that they change often, and a program written once and left in a drawer falls behind them.

08How Does Prodezk Help?

For 24 years we have kept the accounting and compliance of companies owned from Latin America. That is where AML questions usually surface first: in a bank's request for documents, or in a buyer's due diligence. An advisor can review what your company already has on file and what it is missing, and coordinate with counsel where the question is legal. Begin here and we start with your situation.