Anti-money laundering and countering financing of terrorism — Responsibilities

If laws to prevent money laundering and the financing of terrorism apply to your business, you must meet reporting and monitoring requirements. This applies to real estate agents, conveyancers, and many lawyers and accountants — and anyone else who manages money or assets for clients, provides trust or company services, sells property or provides conveyancing services, or handles large amounts of cash.

You’ll need to nominate a compliance officer, and:

1. do a risk assessment
2. maintain a compliance programme to protect your business against being used for money laundering or financing terrorism activity
3. submit an annual report to the government agency supervising your industry
4. submit a Prescribed Transaction Report if a client wants to make a transaction of $10,000 or more in cash, or send an international wire transfer of $1,000 or more
5. report transactions and activities that seem suspicious to the Police Financial Intelligence Unit.

You may also need to change how you identify and verify your customers — see the requirement on Verifying customers’ identities for more.

Click the Learn more button to find out more about who’s affected and what you need to do.