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The OPBAS was established by the UK government in 2018, in an effort to double down on financial crime in the British economy. In part, this is because many law and accountancy firms were found to have inadequate AML measures in place. The professional bodies overseeing them, for example the Association of International Accountants, were not enforcing these measures strictly enough, nor were they issuing penalties when they were not implemented. The OPBAS is intended to remedy this, by ‘supervising the supervisors’.
The OPBAS does not supervise individual firms in the law and accountancy sector directly. Rather, the OPBAS oversees the professional bodies which are responsible for overseeing these firms, to ensure that their AML requirements are stringent enough.
There are currently 22 professional bodies which the OPBAS supervises, ranging from the Association of Accounting Technicians to the Law Society, and even the Faculty Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury. You can find a full breakdown of the professional bodies the OPBAS is responsible for listed over on the FCA’s website.
As the OPBAS has existed for such a short time, it has only issued one report. Alison Barker, director of Specialist Supervision at the FCA, spoke at the Royal United Services Institute in London on 12th March 2019. During her speech, she set out the following objectives for the OPBAS after its first-year findings:
- Professional bodies should implement a risk-based approach to supervision; this means focusing on the most vulnerable firms and ensuring their AML compliance is up to scratch.
- Failure to comply with AML requirements should result in ‘robust enforcement outcomes’. Penalising firms and companies with fines and restrictions is the only way to make sure compliance is taken seriously.
- Supervision should be properly resourced, in terms of both time and money.
- Professional bodies should share intelligence around potential money laundering risks and methods of negating them.
“We want to see an improved quantity and quality of supervision, enforcement and intelligence sharing outcomes"
Going forward, the OPBAS will work alongside the 22 professional bodies they supervise in order to help implement strategies which counter money laundering threats. They will also help to create a useful intelligence-sharing network which all firms and companies in the law and accountancy sectors can benefit from.
If your business is a law or accountancy firm, it will not be overseen directly by the OPBAS, so why should you take notice?
Where anti-money laundering is concerned, the OPBAS is the organisation overseeing your supervisor. This means that their requirements for AML compliance may become stricter, as they are under greater scrutiny than before, and so are you.
From customer due diligence to adverse media screenings and ongoing monitoring, successful AML compliance means being vigilant about the reputation and dealings of your potential client or customer.
The process of carrying out all these different checks manually is extremely slow-going, and it’s impossible to be sure that you haven’t missed anything. Our automated system performs thorough, accurate checks, all on one convenient platform. If we ever do come across a match for your potential client or customer on the Dow Jones WatchList, we’ll provide you with all the tools and information you need to make an informed decision.
