The European Banking Federation (EBF) welcomes the proposal of the European Commission for a fourth Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) Directive and a new Regulation on fund transfers. The proposed legislation is in line with and brings into force the recently revised standards of the Financial Action Task Force.

“During the past decade, Europe’s banks have invested heavily in money laundering and terrorist financing prevention. Banks are by far the largest private contributor to the detection of criminal offences related to money laundering”, declared Guido Ravoet, EBF Chief Executive.

Whilst endorsing the importance of compliance with anti-money-laundering and terrorist financing prevention rules, Europe’s banks reiterate their commitment to this fight.

“Banks’ direct access to centralised public registries of beneficial ownership information would have been welcome,” said Ravoet. “Nevertheless, the Commission’s efforts to increase the requirements on Member States and companies to ensure this information is available to assist financial institutions in carrying out their customer due diligence obligations are positive”.

Coherence with data protection rules and availability of official lists of politically exposed persons are also key elements which would help banks fight more efficiently money laundering and terrorist financing.

“The EBF would have liked these specific issues to be tackled more precisely by the new proposal in order to ensure an effective approach,” concluded Ravoet.