What Are AML Checks & Why Do We Need To Do them?

What Are AML Checks?

AML (Anti-Money Laundering) checks are processes designed to prevent financial crimes such as money laundering, fraud, and terrorist financing. These checks help ensure that businesses and individuals are not using businesses to clean up “dirty money” which may have been illegally obtained from things such as drugs, trafficking or terrorism.

As accountants, we have to conduct AML checks which means gathering proof of a client’s identity, understanding the source of their funds, and ensuring everything is above board in order to protect our clients business and our accountancy practice.

Who Needs To Do An AML Check?

Both new & existing clients. We do an AML check when we onboard every single client and we also redo them every 3 years unless something significantly changes so an update is required earlier. Whether you are a sole trader, private individual or company director we must do these checks. If we onboard a company we check the directors and also anyone that owns more than 25% of the shares in the company.

What Do the Checks Involve?

ID Check: We will check your ID & a recent utility bill along with an online ID check

Know Your Client Check: We review the information received as part of the ID check and then complete a report which looks at what your business does, how it operates and where you make your money from.

Risk Assessment: We then perform a risk assessment to identify any potential risks and how we will manage them.

Charges

We charge an admin fee for doing the above as it is a time consuming process and we incur fees from a software provider for doing the ID checks. It takes time and knowledge from our team to perform these duties and we invest in training for the whole team each year to ensure that we stay compliant.
If you would like to come onboard as a client you can book a discovery call with us here.