SEC to share data with other agencies vs money laundering

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday said it signed a data sharing agreement (DSA) on beneficial ownership with key government agencies in a bid to intensify the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.

In a statement, the SEC said it signed the DSA with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), Philippine National Police (PNP), and the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) last Feb. 28.

The deal will allow the SEC to give timely access to accurate and adequate beneficial ownership information to competent authorities, in line with the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

FATF is an intergovernmental money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog that sets international standards to prevent such illegal activities.

The SEC said it collects ben-

Implementation of new check format deferred to May 2024

The implementation of the issuance of a new check format and specifications has been postponed to May 1, 2024 instead of May 2, 2023.

In its operating memorandum (OM) issued on Jan. 25, the Philippine Clearing House Corporation (PCHC) said the change in the implementation date was based on the recommendation by the Clearing Officers Club, Inc. and was approved by the PCHC Board.

“This deferment in implementation is effected with a view to allowing more time for bank clients to exhaust remaining checks or base stocks of printed checks in their possession,” the memorandum said.

These changes, it said, aim to “set a standard or uniform format of writing the date on checks in order to avoid misinterpretation of date of issue” and to “enhance check processing capabilities by providing banks better optical character recognition features that are needed for an automated check verification system.”

The memorandum said checks that still have the old format “with date of issue written in alphanumeric are acceptable for clearing provided they are dated April 30, 2024 or earlier and they are presented for deposit prior to the 180th day from issue date.” eficial ownership information from its regulated agencies through a number of circulars it has previously released.

“Information gathered by the Commission through the aforementioned circulars play a vital role in identifying the natural person/s maintaining ultimate effective control of the corporation,” the regulator said.

The SEC said beneficial owners of a corporation are dis-

FSEC, P10

Citing the memorandum issued on Feb. 11, 2019, the latest memorandum said the new standards will adopt the month, date and year format on the issue date of the check.

It said the date format guide is indicated below the date line, the individual box is provided for each character of the issue date, the peso sign is moved out of the box vis-à-vis the amount in figures and there should be boxed white spaces for writing the date of issue, the amount in figures and the signature of issuer/drawer.

“The issue date in alphanumeric on old format checks may be written in any sequence, i.e. Month-Day-Year or Day-Month-Year or YearMonth-Day,” it said.

However, the memorandum said “alphanumeric Month-DayYear sequence is preferable for consistency with the MM-DDYYYY sequence prescribed for issue date in numeric format.”

“Notwithstanding the deferment, nonetheless, the date of issue on checks that are in the ‘new format’ (i.e., with boxed spaces) has to be written now in numeric format and strictly in the MM-DD-YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY sequence,” it added. (PNA)

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