The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s annual AML and sanction data collection will start this week, with firms required to provide information about AML and financial sanctions activity and how it’s managed.
All regulated firms must provide the SRA with information on work carried out within the scope of the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017, any contact or involvement with the sanctions regime and the people designated under it, and submission of suspicious activity reports to the National Crime Agency.
‘We appreciate that not all firms are involved with one or more of these regimes – in which case, you will be able to submit a nil return’, the SRA said.
“We are required by our own regulator, the Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision to take a risk-based approach to supervision. To supervise the legal sector effectively, we need to have accurate data. This allows us to see the distribution of risk across the legal profession, which in turn informs our programme of inspections and our guidance.
“Collecting this information allows us to establish where the risks lie and how we can better allocate our resources. Most importantly, this data needs to be up to date and relevant so that our approach can evolve and adapt.”
The SRA has made a specimen version of the questionnaire available to help compliance officers prepare for the data collection. The forms, which are for guidance only and not for submission, can be downloaded as a Word document or PDF on the SRA’s information page, which also includes answers to frequently asked questions: https://www.sra.org.uk/sra/news/firm-anti-money-laundering-sanctions-data-requirements/
