Australia’s Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financial laws have changed. Here is what you need to know!

What are the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Laws?

The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Laws is the legislation designed to assist in identifying and preventing people from money-laundering and funding terrorism. The legislation puts obligations on certain industries to undertake very thorough checks of clients and their activities to identify potential risks of money-laundering and terrorism financing.

What has changed?

The laws have changed so that from 1 July 2026, more industries are classified as designated service providers and now have strict obligations to identify their clients and obtain more information about their transactions.

How does this change for Law Firms?

Law firms are now regulated by this legislation which means that we are now required to comply with these enhanced regulations for a large range of matters before we can commence any work on your matter.

What This Means for You

These new laws require us to implement stricter procedures to identify you, your transaction and the source of funds for these transactions (if applicable).

This means that we will be required to:

1. Verify Your Identity (VOI): We will need to undertake a Verification of Identity for you and any party for whom the transaction relates before we can commence work on the matter. For organisations or other legal entities, this will include all key individuals of that entity. For example, we cannot prepare a Contract of Sale for you until we have completed your Verification of Identity.

We may need to re-verify your identity (or the identity of key individuals within your organisation) even if you are an existing client or we have undertaken a standard VOI with you in the previous two years and your matter will not be completed before 1 July 2026.

2. Understand Source of Funds: We may need to ask for information regarding the source of funds or wealth for your transaction.

3. Identify Beneficial Owners: We must understand who ultimately owns or controls a company or trust that we are acting for, and in some cases, we may also need to undertake a VOI for all shareholders and in some cases, trust beneficiaries. We will let you know if this is the case.

Confidentiality and Privacy

We are committed to our ongoing obligation to maintain client confidentiality and protecting legal professional privilege. However, if we suspect that there may be any suspicious activity, we are legally mandated to report certain suspicious activities to the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC). We cannot advise you if we suspect that there is any suspicious activity or if we have made a report to AUSTRAC.

How will this affect your matter going forward?

We have worked hard behind the scenes to implement changes to our internal processes to ensure compliance with our obligations under the new laws and in a way that provides the least disruption to your matter.

The main types of Services That We Provide That Are Considered “Designated Services” include but are not limited to:

Purchase, sale or transfer of properties;
Purchase, sale or transfer of a business, body corporate or other legal entity;
Purchase, sale or transfer a shelf company;
Creation or restructuring a body corporate, trust, business or company.

If you are buying or selling properties, need assistance with a Trust or Variation of Trust, we will need to undertake the AML steps before we can commence work on the matter.

Your assistance in attending to any requests for documents and information will assist us further in being able to comply with our new obligations with minimal disruption to you.

For more information about the changes to the laws and what it means for you click here to view the AUSTRAC website.