On 26th June 2017, the UK met the EU’s deadline and transposed the Fourth Money Laundering Directive into national legislation.
On Monday 2nd July over 200 law firms and organisations joined Director of Best Practice Gary Yantin and anti-money laundering expert Amy Bell to discuss the implementation of The Fourth Directive and the new Anti-Money Laundering Regulations 2017.
The webinar covered some key questions surrounding the new regulations such as:
- What must firms do to comply with the Fourth Directive?
- How do the changes to pooled client accounts affect me and how likely are the changes to come into force?
- How do you carry out a risk assessment?
- Is there Law Society guidance on how to approach risk-based CDD?
- How will new legislation such as the Criminal Finances Act affect you?
The Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive – Key Takeaways
- Emphasis should be on preparing and tracking a money laundering risk assessment
- 64% of firms train their staff on anti-money laundering every year
- suspicions of money laundering cannot be unfounded, but there doesn’t have to be a lot of weight to the suspicion to report it
- Banks have begun asking for evidence of a risk assessment being carried out
- Politically Exposed Persons: with over 400 political parties in the UK, the new law making PEPs subject to the same scrutiny within the UK as outside the UK means establishing who is a PEP is very important
About the expert
Amy Bell is Chair of the Law Society’s Money Laundering Task Force and the Director of Amy Bell Compliance. Amy was previously Head of Compliance at Quality Solicitors and is the author of the Law Society’s toolkit on the Bribery Act. Amy also provides useful guidance on complying with the Money Laundering Regulations 2017.
VinciWorks’ anti-money laundering e-learning training suite
We have updated all of our anti-money laundering courses for the Fourth Money Laundering Directive. This includes a change in reference, from Money Laundering Regulations 2007 to Money Laundering Regulations 2017.
