Whilst Real Estate accounts for only 0.2% of all Anti Money Laundering claims reported to the National Crime Agency, the property sector faces a high risk from money laundering. With HMRC enforcing Customer Due Diligence and Know Your Client checks, it is important that surveyors understand their role in identifying customer risk and ensuring that customer due diligence checks are undertaken and recorded correctly.
Members of BHT attended an informative CPD webinar on Anti Money Laundering Legislation in property by fellow Property Agents Independent (PAI) member James Routledge from Matthews & Goodman. The seminar gave an overview of the responsibility that surveyors have individually during a transaction to ensure that anti money laundering regulations are adhered to and the consequences of failing to undertake the correct due diligence.
Principal causes of Anti Money Laundering fines in property since 2018 include the failure to apply adequate Customer Due Diligence in estate agency work, failure to conduct ongoing monitoring of business relationships, inadequate record keeping and poor training for prevention and recognition of AML activities.
Property Agents Independent (PAI) chairman Fergus Laird spoke during the webinar providing his thoughts and commented, “in investment work in particular we have to be especially diligent, we deal with overseas clients, pension funds or funds where you have to try and identify individuals or syndicates.”
Dominic Evans and Linda Kehlet from Matthews & Goodman assisted James and Fergus in answering questions from attendees at the end of the presentation.
