Duane Bavlnka

Actually, “compliance” is not a four-letter word…it’s a 10-letter word. However, compliance is often associated with four letters — such as ECOA, HMDA, TILA, TISA, EFTA, FCRA, SCRA, OFAC, RFPA, UDAP, CFPB and FDIC. To keep things interesting, compliance also tosses around some three-letter ones: BSA, CRA, CIP and OCC.

Are you comfortable with these 16 words? Test your knowledge of them in the puzzle below. Just place the word in the space for the sentence that describes it. Find the answers, starting today, Feb. 20, by going to the intranet Compliance Page and clicking on the “Four-Letter Words Answers” link. Have fun!

________ Law passed in response to the growing cash revenue of organized crime, particularly the traffic in illegal drugs

________ Requires identifying and verifying the identity of new customers

________ Process for determining whether a customer appears on any list of known or suspected terrorists or terrorist organizations

________ Report used to notify the government of high-dollar cash transaction

________ Protects the rights of consumers in regard to electronic fund transfers

________ Ensures that credit terms are disclosed in a meaningful way so that consumers can compare credit terms more readily and knowledgeably

________ Designed to regulate the consumer reporting industry

________ Gives customers with the right to expect that their financial activities will have a reasonable amount of privacy from federal government scrutiny

________ Protects loan applicants from discrimination

________ Designed to enable consumers to make informed decisions about accounts at depository institutions

________ Provides insurance on deposit accounts in the event of a bank failure

________ Regulates banking activities for banks of $10 billion or more

________ Provides the public with information that will help show whether financial institutions are serving the housing credit needs of their neighborhoods and communities

________ Federal banking regulator over North Shore Bank

________ Program that provides certain protections from civil actions against service members who are called to active duty

________ Encourages financial institutions to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered