The Investment Industry Association of Canada (IIAC) has submitted its comments to the Department of Finance on its discussion paper dealing with reviewing Canada’s anti-money laundering (AML) and anti-terrorist financing (ATF) regime, highlighting three key priorities.

Those priorities include: modernizing methods to ascertain client identity; information sharing (public/private, private/private) as well as corporate transparency, specifically the need to create a national beneficial ownership registry.

The IIAC has also commented on the challenges in expanding the range of positions that may fall within the domestic Politically Exposed Persons requirements, accepting facial recognition technology as an acceptable method of client identification and on the challenges related to administrative monetary penalties and exemptive relief and administrative forbearance.

Balancing the regulatory burden

The IIAC also stressed the importance of balancing the regulatory burden against the effectiveness and efficiency of the overall AML/ATF Regime.

The federal government released a consultation paper earlier this year as part of its five-year review of the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act.  The paper sets out policy considerations that call for amendments to the current act, some of which include expanding the scope of the act to include new financial providers and expanding the scope of current provisions dealing with politically exposed persons.