WASHINGTON, Dec 21: United States banking regulators announced an agreement on Thursday with the Habib Bank to bolster policies aimed at detecting abuse by money launderers, terrorist financiers and other criminals.

The action announced by the Federal Reserve Board and the New York State Banking Department targets deficiencies at the bank’s New York branch.

Regulators said the bank agreed to take steps to address compliance problems in its anti-money laundering policies.

Among other things, the agreement calls on the bank to improve its internal controls to detect abuses by money launderers and others.

The bank must set up a programme to make sure that suspicious financial transactions are reported in a timely manner.

It also must do a better job of verifying the identification of their customers. Employees must be trained to help them detect abuses of the bank’s services.

The agreement comes days after banking regulators ordered the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ to beef up its anti-money laundering policies.

Banking authorities also announced that financial institutions would soon have a new format by which to report suspicious transactions to the government. The change is meant to reduce the number of duplicate suspicious activity reports filed.—AP