Market Overview

Since 2007 the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act (2006) (AML/CTF) has mandated obligations on reporting entities which provide a designated service. Designated services are provided by banks, nonbank financial services, remittance (money transfer) services, bullion dealers and gambling businesses.

To meet these obligations, over 14,000 Australian organisations need to conduct enhanced customer due diligence, transaction monitoring, threshold and suspicious matter reporting, record keeping, correspondent banking controls and the implementation of an AML/CTF program. From 1 January 2016 these obligations were tightened to additionally require:

- Identification and verification of individuals and companies using independent, reliable data
- Collection and verification of beneficial ownership and control
- Implementation of PEP & Sanctions Screening for customers and beneficial owners
- Implementation of ongoing risk-based AML management and Customer Due Diligence processes.

Compliance with the AML legislation can be costly; non-compliance can be even more costly.

From September 2016 the legislation was further amended to allow reporting entities to collect information about their customers from providers like Equifax, rather than collecting all information directly from their customers.

How Equifax helps businesses across the AML lifecycle

Whether you're looking to on-board new customers quickly and efficiently, or establish an ongoing Customer Due Diligence program, we have the data, solutions and know-how to help you meet your AML obligations.

We can help you:

Collect

Equifax can help you collect AML information directly from your customers. We provide white labelled customer onboarding web forms as part of our AML and Credit Decisioning offering.

Business Verification and Beneficial Ownership

Confirm a business is valid and registered in Australia against ASIC, ABR and ATO registers. Quickly identify Beneficial Ownership and use our visualisation tool to fast track your interpretation of your customers’ corporate structures. For foreign entities our overseas partner provides information suitable for AML purposes on over 65 million companies in 230 countries.

Identify Individuals

Use Australia’s most comprehensive electronic identity verification service to verify individuals. Layer in the fraud assessment components to get the complete picture of your customer. Our locally hosted Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) check screens against a global database of over 1.3 million entities in 240 countries. For sanctions checks, we screen against
100% of all publically available regulatory global watchlists.

Ongoing Customer Due Diligence

Keeping on top of changes to your customers is simple with automated alerts. Be the first to know of changes to your AML customer base that may impact their risk profile. For annual customer due diligence requirements, utilise our batch service for re-verification of your existing customer base.