Australian Accounting and Legal firms are now subject to AUSTRAC’s Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) laws.
Position your firm to be ahead of the AML compliance curve with FeeSynergy’s Identity Verification solution!
Who is AUSTRAC?
AUSTRAC (Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre) is the Australian Government agency responsible for detecting, deterring and disrupting criminal abuse of the financial system to protect the community from serious and organised crime.
Through a strong regulatory and reporting framework AUSTRAC collects and analyses financial reports and information to generate financial intelligence. Information about criminal activity contributes to Australia’s national security and law enforcement investigations.
AUSTRAC’s regulatory activities include:
- Identifying new and emerging risks
- Identifying and collecting data to generate regulatory insights.
- Using regulatory insights and financial intelligence to assess industry vulnerabilities and threats to Australia’s financial sector
- Collaborating with industry to improve risk management, help them comply, educate them on risks and compliance
- Supporting national security and law enforcement operations
- Taking a risk-based approach to interventions against non-compliant reporting entities
- Taking enforcement action against reporting entities for serious and/or systemic breaches of the AML/CTF Act.
Why accountants?
The global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recognises that some services that accountants provide make them vulnerable to become unwittingly involved or accessory to money laundering or terrorist financing activities.
As part of AUSTRAC’s AML/CTF Tranche 2 Reform, accounting and legal firms will be subject to an onerous but important compliance regime. Fundamental to compliance will be verification of the identity of clients to check that they are not fraudsters, or worse.
The good news is that FeeSynergy has enhanced its Collect software platform to enable Australian accounting and legal firm clients to perform client Identification Verification (IDV) whilst maintaining audit logs of which clients have been verified and which ones have not.
Using world-class bio-metrics and integrated with all leading practice management systems, this solution ticks all the boxes for current TPB and ATO identity verification compliance.
What’s included in FeeSynergy’s Identity Verification solution?
- Biometric Verification: facial recognition with state-of-the-art liveness detection
- Data Verification: driver’s licence or Passport – checked and verified against local authority and government agency databases
- Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) check and Sanctions checks
AUSTRAC AML/CTF Tranche 2 Reforms
Tranche 2 will apply to Accountants, Lawyers and Real Estate Agents.
Accounting firms captured by Tranche 2 will need to establish a comprehensive AML risk assessment regime to identify, assess and manage risk exposures. 2 vital components of risk assessment include PEP and Sanctions Verifications.
- Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) are defined by AUSTRAC as individuals who occupy a prominent public position or function in a government body or international organisation, both within and outside Australia. This definition also extends to their immediate family members and close associates.
- Sanctions are measures imposed by the Australian Government and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in situations of international concern. They restrict activities relating to particular countries, goods and services, persons and entities.
The FeeSynergy Identity Verification solution offers a seamless one step process to providing peace of mind that your firm is dealing with ‘real’ clients … whom you want to deal with!
For more information please head to our Identity Verification page or email us at info@feesynergy.com.au
