Take tour   Speak with an expert
Take tour Speak with an expert

Announcing Integrated Support for FinCEN Key Terms: A New Way To Make Your SARs More Impactful With Less Work

Courtney Chuang

Head of Product Marketing

Hummingbird is the first case management platform to let you automatically add FinCEN Key Terms while you work your investigations. You can now search a complete list of Key Terms, see a summary of the original publication, and automatically populate SARs with Key Terms – without ever leaving Hummingbird. Soon, we’ll be introducing even more automation, with proactive suggestions for relevant Key Terms based on your case data. To learn more, request a demo.


It’s no secret the landscape of financial crime is ever-changing. Major geopolitical events, evolving regulatory environments, and emerging technologies breed entirely new types of crime while also providing novel pathways for well-established criminal enterprises. 

To fight financial crime in this ever-changing landscape, FinCEN publishes and maintains a list of SAR “Key Terms.” These Key Terms represent high-priority, trending crimes, and their inclusion in SARs provides critical intelligence to law enforcement and regulators.

As a compliance leader, you are constantly striving to submit high-quality, effective SARs. That’s why we’re so excited to announce support for FinCEN’s Publications and Key Terms in Hummingbird, the first of its kind for a case management platform. Hummingbird’s new features are designed to help your investigators prepare impactful SARs – in less time and with less effort. 

Make your SARs more impactful for law enforcement, while complying with FinCEN’s guidance, by automatically adding Key Terms in Hummingbird.

Now, in Hummingbird, you can search FinCEN’s full list of Key Terms, review a summary of the original publication, and automatically add Key Terms to your SAR Narrative and Note to FinCEN. Including Key Terms in your SARs has never been this easy or straightforward.

Let’s dive deeper into what exactly you can do with Key Terms in Hummingbird.

Search FinCEN’s full list of Key Terms, right in the case

Between working cases and meeting deadlines, staying up-to-date on FinCEN’s list of Key Terms can be difficult to manage. With Hummingbird, you can say goodbye to having to manually search and reference FinCEN’s Publications.

Hummingbird lets you search FinCEN’s complete list of active Key Terms while you work your case. Investigating what looks like suspicious real estate investments? As you’re writing the SAR Narrative, simply look up “real estate” to find potentially relevant Key Terms – without ever leaving the platform.

Whenever FinCEN releases a new publication, Hummingbird will automatically add any new Key Terms to the list, so your team stays aware of important and trending typologies.

6446cc906c3a1795addca142_Hummingbird_FinCEN_Key_Terms_Search

Quickly view more information on a specific Key Term

Let’s say you’ve added a Key Term to your SAR, but you’re not exactly sure if it’s the right one. In Hummingbird, you can easily view more contextual information on each Key Term.

To learn more about a Key Term, just click “View more info” to expand a summary of the related FinCEN Publication. If you need even more information, you can always find a link back to FinCEN’s original document at the bottom of the summary.

6446cc6f54087dadb5629a40_Hummingbird_FinCEN_Key_Terms_View_Information

Automatically add Key Terms to your SARs

Hummingbird makes consistently applying Key Terms to SARs a breeze. No more having to remember to copy-paste the Key Term into multiple places before you file. 

Once you’ve selected a Key Term, Hummingbird will automatically populate the Key Term in the two SAR fields requested by FinCEN: the Narrative Body and the Note to FinCEN. 

6446cbe4d4835853a1323556_Hummingbird_FinCEN_Key_Terms_Automated_SAR_Filing

Continually elevating the craft of compliance

Today’s support for FinCEN Key Terms is only the start. We’ll be introducing even more automation to help you run high-quality investigations, faster. Soon, you’ll get proactive suggestions for Key Terms based on your case data, so you never miss an opportunity to make your SARs more valuable to regulators and law enforcement.

Want an early look and see how else Hummingbird can help automate your compliance workflow? Schedule a demo today, and see why top financial institutions, including Evolve Bank & Trust, Stripe, and Etsy, all trust our software to help them fight financial crime. 

‍If you are a current Hummingbird customer and would like to learn more about including FinCEN Key Terms in your SARs, please log in and visit our help center.

Stay Connected

Subscribe to receive new content from Hummingbird