Covered persons must digitize records by Sept.
THE ANTI-MONEY Laundering Council (AMLC) has reminded covered persons to comply with its September deadline for digitizing their customer records, which is meant to improve internal monitoring and analysis.
The “dirty money” watchdog on Tuesday said the Sept. 30 deadline to comply with the Guidelines on Digitization of Customer Records (DIGICUR) will apply to all covered persons. The guidelines were issued in September 2018 and the deadline has been extended twice from April 2019 originally.
Failure to comply with the DIGICUR is considered a grave violation under the AMLC’s Rules of Procedure in Administrative Cases. This means non-compliant covered persons may be subject to penalties worth P37,500 to P375,000.
The database will allow compliance officers and other authorized officials to retrieve urgent records upon order or request without having to tap the branches concerned on a per need basis. Digitized customer records will enable faster uploading to the AMLC portal, the agency said.
All covered persons are also required to update their Money Laundering/Terrorism Financing Prevention Program, which should contain the comprehensive and written internal policies of covered persons for the prevention of activities related to illicit funds from money laundering and terrorism financing in their operations.
The watchdog said adopting the guidelines will level the playing field for Philippine banks and their international peers as compliance officers in most global banks are doing the function of financial transaction assessment, monitoring, and analysis, and submit informative suspicious transaction reports to financial intelligence units.
“Direct access to customer records in the covered person’s database would empower compliance officers and their duly authorized officers to proactively analyze by themselves the financial profile of customers, independently of the covered person’s front liners,” the AMLC said in a previous advisory related to the DIGICUR.
Foreign banks are also expected to comply with the guidelines by maintaining their central database of digital customer records in their respective head offices or main branches in the Philippines.
The DIGICUR is in line with the 2018 Implementing Rules and Regulations of or the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2001, as amended.
The Philippines in June was included in the “gray list” of the Financial Action Task Force as one of the countries that are now under increased monitoring to prove their effective implementation of tighter anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing measures. The country needs to show progress to avoid counteract measures.
In September, the AMLC is set to submit its first progress report to the FATF, which it earlier said will focus on the process for delisting or unfreezing of funds or assets.
Government officials hope the country will be able to exit the FATF’s gray list by January 2023. — L.W.T. Noble
