Response to consultation on draft Guidelines on the role, tasks and responsibilities AML/CFT compliance officers

Go back

1. Do you have any comments on the section ‘Subject matter, scope and definitions’?

Firstly, we would like to underline that the prepared Guidelines cover a very wide range of entities whose scope of activity and risk related to AML / CTF are very diverse. In connection with the above, it should be noted that the requirements specified in the Guidelines should indicate and clearly define that the financial sector operator, based on the risk analysis performed, should decide which Guidelines should apply and which not on based risk approach. The scope of possible methods and risks associated with AML / TF in the case of e.g. credit institutions is different than in the case of loan institutions.

Therefore, the Guidelines should clearly indicate that the scope obligations for financial sector operator should be applied depending on the risk identified in each sector operator.

2. Do you have any comments on Guideline 4.1 ‘Role and responsibilities of the management body in the AML/CFT framework and of the senior manager responsible for AML/CFT’?

The indicated point requires the management body, inter alia to have a knowledge of the national legal and regulatory framework relating to the prevention from ML / TF, adequate knowledge skills, experience, implementations of policies, controls and procedures, reviewing activity of the compliance officer, assessing the effective functioning of the AML / CTF. It should be noted that the members of the management board of financial sector operators are appointed, as the name suggests, to manage, conduct its affairs and represent the entity outside. Requiring a management board member to have specialist legal knowledge is not justified even in the case of such important issues as AML / TF. In fact, the presented Guidelines require, like no legal act, to appoint management body people with very extensive and specialized legal knowledge. Especially that apart from managing the entity, it is required to personally control compliance with regulations and procedures. In this respect, an alternative solution seems to be leaving the responsibility of the management board members for compliance with AML / CTF-related obligations, which may be performed by personnel reporting directly to the management board, including the AML officer.

3. Do you have any comments on Guideline 4.2 ‘Role and responsibilities of the AML/CFT compliance officer’?

Officer's responsibilities include the need to annually prepare, and update specified reports, e.g. report on significant remedial programs or activity report. The justification for resignation from such a requirement is, already indicated, fact of the different scale of operations of the financial sector operators and the different ML / TF risks which should in fact determine both the need and the frequency of amending or preparing reports. The decision regarding the preparation of the activity report and the frequency of preparing the reports should depend on the decision of the financial sector operator, considering risk-based approach related to ML / CF. The financial sector operator which recognized low ML / TF risk should be able to decide whether to prepare a report at all or include only some necessary elements in its content.

4. Do you have any comments on Guideline 4.3 ‘Organisation of the AML/CFT compliance function at group level’?

n/a

5. Do you have any comments on Guideline 4.4 ‘Review of the AML/CFT compliance function by competent authorities’?

n/a

Name of the organization

Zwiazek Przedsiebiorst Finansowych w Polsce (ZPF)