February 2020

Welcome to the February issue of Compliance Officer news

We’ve been listening to your feedback about needing more support and guidance, so we have been working to develop material which will help you. In this newsletter you will see we have a series of new videos, a webinar on CDD and a new Regulatory Findings report - all designed to improve your understanding of the system, what you need to do and why it’s important.

It’s been great to see so many of you stepping up and doing the right thing to keep New Zealand in business for good. Keep an eye on our website this year for updated guidance and more material to help you.

If you need additional support our team are ready to assist either by phone, 0800 25 78 87 or email: AMLCFT@dia.govt.nz.

In this issue:

• Regulatory Findings Report
• Understanding our regulatory approach 
• Customer Due Diligence webinar 
• New videos about your AML/CFT obligations
• Guidance updates: Sector Risk Assessments 
• FATF high risk and other monitored jurisdiction update

Regulatory Findings Report

We’re pleased to provide a report on our regulatory findings for the 12 months ended 30 June 2019, a period of significant growth in our supervisory responsibilities. It’s intended to help you understand our expectations, and how you can improve your systems and processes to comply with your AML/CFT obligations.

We want to make sure we’ve addressed any areas of confusion about what we consider to be best practice and unsatisfactory practice, so we’ve created a survey asking you what you thought about the Regulatory Findings Report and what areas you still have questions about.

Once we have your feedback, we will publish a video on our website answering the questions and discussing any common topics or themes that came up.

Understanding our regulatory approach 

To help you understand our regulatory approach we’ve created a high-level document that outlines our purpose, who must comply, key obligations under the Act, and the kinds of interventions we use.

Customer Due Diligence (CDD) webinar 

Knowing your customer is a cornerstone of the AML/CFT Act as criminals seeking to launder money or finance terrorism will often try to avoid attracting attention by masking their identity and where their money has come from. We have created this webinar to help you understand the customer due diligence obligation, and what information must be collected.

The webinar covers:

• What CDD is and why you need to do it;
• When to conduct CDD;
• Who to conduct CDD on;
• Beneficial ownership;
• Standard CDD requirements;
• Verifying identity using the Identity verification Code of Practice (IVCOP);
• Examples of CDD;
• When you can rely on others to conduct CDD for you; and
• Ongoing CDD and account monitoring.

New videos about your AML/CFT obligations

We’ve produced a series of four videos to help you understand your obligations under the AML/CFT Act and what you need to do to help protect your business, and New Zealanders from the social and economic harm caused by money laundering and financing of terrorism.

These videos can be sent to front line staff, other employees or anyone else that could use help understanding what they need to do and why it’s important.

Guidance updates: Sector Risk Assessments 

Two new Sector Risk Assessments (SRAS) were recently published which replace the previous Phase 1 and Phase 2 SRAs. As well as a change in names, there have been changes to the content. You should look at the updated guidance and consider whether you need to update your risk assessment and AML/CFT programme.

FATF high risk and other monitored jurisdiction update

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), of which New Zealand is part of, updated its list of ‘high risk and other monitored jurisdictions’ on 21 February 2020. The additional countries on the FATF list are Albania, Barbados, Jamaica, Mauritius, Myanmar, Nicaragua and Uganda. Trinidad and Tobago have come off the list so are no longer subject to FATF’s ongoing monitoring process.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Iran remain on the FATF list of High Risk jurisdictions and are subject to a Call for Action.

This is a timely reminder that you are required to conduct an enhanced level of customer due diligence on all non-resident customers from countries that have insufficient AML/CFT systems or measures in place. There are additional requirements to monitor and examine business relationship and transactions involving these countries, and where necessary, have additional measures or restrictions on dealing with them.

Further information relating to the requirements of the AML/CFT Act in relation to country risk is in the AML/CFT supervisors’ Countries Assessment Guideline.

We encourage everyone to refer to our website dia.govt.nz/amlcft regularly for updates on our guidance, information and advice.

The team are ready to assist either by phone - 0800 25 78 87 or email AMLCFT@dia.govt.nz.