Accountancy Europe welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the European Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) consultation on draft guidelines for the ongoing monitoring of business relationships.
Accountancy Europe supports AMLA’s objective of strengthening risk-based and effective anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) monitoring. However, the draft guidelines should better reflect the different operating models of financial and non-financial obliged entities.
The guidelines should provide greater proportionality for smaller accountancy practices and other non-financial obliged entities.
Accountants and auditors generally do not execute or continuously monitor client transactions. Instead, ongoing monitoring is largely based on information obtained through professional engagements, client interactions, documentation, changes in ownership or business activities, and other relevant developments.
Requirements designed around continuous transaction monitoring and sophisticated data systems should therefore not be applied uniformly across all obliged entities. The guidelines should take into account differences in business models, services and risk exposure.
Accountancy Europe cautions against excessive AML/CFT governance and documentation requirements that could divert resources from effective risk mitigation towards demonstrating compliance.
Documentation and review expectations should be proportionate to:
A proportionate approach would help ensure that resources remain focused on identifying and mitigating ML/TF risks.
Accountancy Europe calls for sector-specific guidance and practical examples to support consistent implementation of the AML/CFT framework across the EU.
At the same time, the guidelines should allow obliged entities to exercise appropriate professional judgment based on their specific circumstances and risk profile.
The guidelines should not create expectations for costly automated monitoring systems or advanced analytical tools where these are not appropriate for an entity’s business model.
Accountancy Europe supports a risk-based approach to updating customer information.
This should include avoiding the automatic re-collection of expired identity documents where existing customer information remains accurate, up to date and sufficient for the relevant AML/CFT requirements.
For these points and further recommendations on AMLA’s draft guidelines on the ongoing monitoring of business relationships, see Accountancy Europe’s response to the consultation.
