The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) is developing industry-specific starter program kits to help financial businesses prepare for their upcoming requirements under the Anti-Money Laundering/Counter-Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) Act.
From July next year, the AML/ CTF reforms will expand to include financial professionals, such as accountants and trust and company service providers, and providers of ‘designated services’ will have new requirements under the act.
‘Designated services’ include managing or holding client funds, securities and other assets, or assisting in the sale, purchase or transfer of real estate or businesses, and creating, operating or managing companies trusts and partnerships.
Further, acting as, or arranging for another person to act as, certain appointments also comes under designated services, as does acting as, or arranging for another person to act as, a nominee shareholder of a body corporate or legal arrangement.
Providing a registered office address or principal place of business address of a body corporate or legal arrangement in the course of carrying on a business is also considered a designated service.
“We will look to support you with all of this in several ways. One of those ways is what we’re calling AML/CTF starter program kits,” AUSTRAC industry education and outreach acting director Hilary Randall told an Institute of Financial Professionals Australia webinar last Friday.
“For typical, small, low-complexity businesses that are providing those new designated services, AUSTRAC is developing AML/CTF starter program kits and we’re consulting with industry bodies on this. Now what the kits aim to do is they’ll provide an ML/TF risk assessment and the accompanying AML/CTF policies for a typical low-complexity small business in your sector.”
The starter kits will be industry specific and are expected to be made available with further sector-specific guidance in January.
“They’ll essentially have a risk assessment that takes you through the common risks for an accounting business and then the common policies, or expected policies, we would expect you to have in place to manage and mitigate those risks. But they’ll also provide some insights into sector-wide money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation financing risk,” Randall explained.
