What are firms required to do under AML legislation?
The Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 imposes a number of obligations upon reporting entities.
These obligations include:
- carrying out an assessment of the money laundering and terrorism financing risk a reporting entity may reasonably expect to face;
- establishing, implementing and maintaining an AML/CFT compliance programme that includes internal procedures, policies and controls that will detect, manage and mitigate this risk;
- carrying out customer due diligence (CDD) (which includes customer identification and verification); and ongoing CDD;
- undertaking suspicious transaction reporting; and
- robust record keeping.
Reporting entities should work to ensure they comply with these requirements when the Act comes fully into force on 30 June 2013. Codes of practice and guidelines will be released to help reporting entities determine what their obligations are and how they can best meet them.
Please note that firms supervised by the RBNZ must
continue to observe their existing obligations under other legislation. For
more information see Financial Stability, Banking system oversight, Non-bank deposit taker oversight and Insurance.
Supervisory approach
The AML/CFT Supervisory Framework (PDF 103KB) sets out the AML framework and shared objectives, functions, powers and guiding principles of the three AML supervisors.
An introduction to the Reserve Bank’s supervisory approach can be found in Anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism - the Reserve Bank’s responsibilities and approach (PDF 63KB) Reserve Bank Bulletin, September 2010. The article sets out our role and responsibilities with regard to the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009. The article explains the regulatory and supervisory framework established by the Act, discusses the Reserve Bank’s risk-based approach in this context and outlines some of the major areas of work to be undertaken to develop and implement the Reserve Bank’s supervisory framework.
Further information on the Reserve Bank’s supervisory approach can be found in Anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism – the Reserve Bank’s supervisory approach (PDF 1.3MB) by Hamish Armstrong, Reserve Bank Bulletin, June 2012. This article provides more detail on our proposed supervisory approach and updates the material published in September 2010.
