NEWS
AIA
NEWS THEMATIC REVIEW
Trust and Company Service Providers Thematic Review published New guidance for members
We expect firms providing higher risk services to recognise the risks, have a documented firm-wide risk assessment, strong verification procedures and robust procedures for monitoring ongoing relationships with clients. This new guidance has been specially formulated for AIA Members in Practice offering trust or company service work and is influenced by the outcome of the 2022 Thematic Review. Access new guidance: www.aiaworldwide.com/my-aia/aml/ tcsp-risk/ AIAWORLDWIDE.COM | ISSUE 123
The United Kingdom National Risk Assessment (2020) highlighted trust and company service providers (TCSPs) as being at a higher risk of exploitation by criminals to facilitate money laundering. 51% of AIA’s total population of supervised firms currently offer trust and company services to clients. In Spring 2022, we undertook the TCSP Thematic Review for Small and Medium Sized Practices to assess the nature of these services and to explore the risk that they may be used to facilitate money laundering. The report sets out a selection of the qualitative and quantitative data and trends we observed from the responses to questionnaires we sent to firms offering TCSP services. The findings show that all the firms we surveyed consider and assess the risk of providing TCSP services as lower when provided to existing clients with a clear business rationale expressed for the service. The thematic review highlighted examples of good practice and recommended improvements over several key areas: ● firm-wide procedures; ● customer due diligence; ● risk factors; ● enhanced due diligence; ● suspicious activity reporting; and ● training.
AIA’s monitoring and supervision strategy. AIA Director of Operations and MLRO David Potts said: ‘We monitor our supervised population and take measures where necessary to ensure compliance. Understanding the underlying risk factors within our supervised population means we can better educate our firms to identify, mitigate and avoid these risks and protect themselves from unwittingly aiding economic crime. The new guidance released by AIA today is another key tool for our supervised firms.’
The report also noted how the results of the thematic review have impacted
See www.aiaworldwide.com/insights/ aml/tcsp to read the report.
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