The USA PATRIOT Act, enacted in October 2001, contains a number of amendments to the Bank Secrecy Act that over time will affect all American financial institutions, not just depositories.

The USA PATRIOT extends existing Bank Secrecy Act obligations to new financial institutions. This means that mutual funds, insurance companies and ultimately unaffiliated loan companies, along with other types of financial institutions, will have to report suspicious customer activities and large currency transactions to the federal government, the way that banks currently do.

In addition, the USA PATRIOT creates new obligations. Some of these only apply to banks, such as the requirement to provide certain information within 120 hours of receiving a demand from an appropriate federal agency. Other obligations apply both to banks and other financial institutions, such as the requirement to establish an anti-money laundering program and a customer identity verification program. None of these new obligations applies to a financial institution until the Treasury Department writes regulations applicable to that financial institution. Although this means that currently only banks and a few other categories are covered, eventually regulations will apply to most, if not all, financial institutions.