EBA Consultation Paper on draft Guidelines

A chance to make yourself heard!

The European Banking Authority (EBA) is in the process of issuing Guidelines on policies and procedures relating to compliance management and the role and responsibilities of the AML/CFT Compliance Officer within the financial sector, which include banks, insurance companies and credit institutions.

A consultation paper together with the draft Guidelines has been issued by the EBA. The EBA will hold a virtual public hearing on the draft Guidelines on 28 September 2021 and once the consultation responses have been assessed, they will become legally binding.

Subject persons are being encouraged to read the draft Guidelines and submit their feedback directly to the EBA by 2 November 2021. This is a chance for subject persons, MLROs and directors to review the Guidelines before they are finalised and give their opinion or raise any concerns which they might have with respect to their implementation and how they would apply in practice.

The paper goes on to provide a brief summary of the draft Guidelines and the questions to which subject persons may submit their feedback. If you would like to discuss any aspect of the draft Guidelines to better understand the impact this will have on operations going forward or require assistance to submit related feedback, feel free to get in touch with our Financial Crime Compliance Team.

The Guidelines will seek to regulate the AML/CFT governance set-up at an EU level, setting expectations of the role, tasks, and responsibilities of the compliance officer and the management body of subject persons, and their interaction, including at group level. AML/CFT compliance officers need to have a sufficient level of seniority, which entails the powers to propose measures to ensure the compliance and effectiveness of the internal AML/CFT measures to the management body in its supervisory and management function.

The draft Guidelines also specify the tasks and roles of the members of the management board, or senior management where no management board exists, who are in charge of AML/CFT overall, and on the role of group AML/CFT compliance officers.

Where a financial services operator is part of a group, the draft Guidelines provide that an AML/CFT compliance officer in the parent company should be appointed to ensure the establishment and implementation of effective group-wide AML/CFT policies and procedures and to ensure that any shortcomings in the AML/CFT framework affecting the entire group or a large part of the group are addressed effectively.

Provisions in the draft Guidelines are designed to be applied in a proportionate manner, taking into account the diversity of financial sector operators that are within the scope of the AML Directive.

The Consultation Paper on the draft Guidelines lists the following questions on which feedback by subject persons may be submitted directly to the EBA:

Do you have any comments on the section ‘Subject matter, scope and definitions’?
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’?
Do you have any comments on Guideline 4.2 ‘Role and responsibilities of the AML/CFT compliance officer’?
Do you have any comments on Guideline 4.3 ‘Organisation of the AML/CFT compliance function at group level’?
Do you have any comments on Guideline 4.4 ‘Review of the AML/CFT compliance function by competent authorities’?

The Consultation Paper and the draft Guidelines can be found here.

Submit your feedback to the EBA here.

Register for the EBA virtual public hearing here.