Urgent AML compliance deadline for all lawyers and estate agents in South Africa, what the FIC wants and how to get yourself fully complaint in less than 5 minutes
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has told South Africa that if it wants to meet its anti-money-laundering deadline and have SA removed from the greylist by January 2025, it needs to ensure that all companies who need to report about their compliance do so by May 2024.
The Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) specifically said that predominantly lawyers and estate agents are holding South Africa back by not reporting on their Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance.
This prompted the FIC’s head of compliance and prevention, Christopher Malan, to extend an urgent plea to lawyers and estate agents in SA, with a stern warning that the FIC will “have to start sanctioning because we cannot agree to this level of non-compliance”.
If you are a lawyer or estate agent, this is what the AML compliance and greylisting thing is all about, what the FIC wants from you and how to get compliant super fast…
Lawyers and Estate Agents in the Spotlight
On 13 and 15 February 2024, the FIC announced that the FATF requires it to get all “accountable institutions” to report on their AML compliance by the end of May 2024 – which is a lot sooner than SA’s 2025 greylist deadline.
According to reports, only 52% of South Africa’s 16’000 legal professionals have submitted their risk and compliance reports, while only 42% of SA’s 9’000 estate agents have done the same.
The FIC has already issued notices, but if you are unsure what to do, see how to get:
See why you need great AML in property sales.
An Issue of National Interest – AML Penalties are on the Way
It’s so important, in fact, that the FIC has threatened to “start sanctioning” those who don’t report on their AML compliance. (Which it has already done in the past – see how much the SARB fined Grindrod Bank for non-compliance.)
Penalties for non-compliance can go into the R millions, be pegged on your turnover and profit, and may even include jail time.
But it’s completely unnecessary to even risk AML penalties because you can literally be compliant within a few minutes…
What Lawyers & Estate Agents Need to Do to Ensure Compliance
When it comes to AML compliance, the only thing you need is to perform Sanction List Screening on all new and existing clients and include it in your compliance reporting.
Sanction Screening is the process of scanning all existing and new clients (before you enter into a business relationship with them) against the official Sanction Lists required by the FATF.
It would be a laborious and costly exercise to do manually, which is why using technology is the best way – the process requires constant and automated screening and adherence to updates on the sanction lists.
And it takes only a few minutes to set up…
How to Get Sanction Screening
Most international tools are almost unaffordable here in Africa – see how we’ve compared actual pricing in our post on cost VS compliance. But ZenDetect is up to 90% more affordable.
So, if you’re serious about getting AML compliant and still being profitable, get fully automated world-class sanction screening like so:
STEP 1: Book a Demo with us and we'll show you how ZenDetect operates, discuss technical details, and explain integration with your admin systems.
STEP 2: Our team will assist your developer in integrating ZenDetect, or help you find a developer for this purpose.
STEP 3: As soon as it’s set up, you can bulk upload your database and screening begins immediately – the system will continuously and automatically screen, and you’ll be notified whenever the Sanction Lists are updated or if a flag requires your attention.
See more info on how to get sanction screening in Africa.
