World Council recently submitted a letter to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) with comments regarding its Risk-Based Guidance on Beneficial Ownership (Recommendation 25). Recommendation 25 is additional guidance to help prevent the misuse of legal arrangements for money laundering or terrorist financing.

World Council expressed its support for strong anti-money laundering practices and the additional guidance to aid national-level implementation related to beneficial owners of certain accounts. However, World Council urged FATF to include stronger language ensuring individual countries create and maintain reliable registries for credit unions and other financial institutions to readily identify beneficial owners. World Council provided additional information regarding credit unions and the nature of their services. World Council's letter also requests clearer guidance to more specifically direct individual jurisdictions to take a proportional risk-based approach to establishing implementation requirements, specifically for credit unions.

Click here to read the full letter submitted by World Council.