Next stage in the implementation of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act is looming



The estate agency industry has barely six weeks left in which to gear itself up for the next stage in the implementation of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act, says Mr Bill Rawson, national president of the Institute of Estate Agents. By June 30, each estate agency firm will have to have written implementation procedures in place for verifying their clients' identities and keeping the required records, to have trained all its agents in staff in those procedures, and to have appointed a compliance officer to make sure that everyone follows the procedures. The Estate Agency Affairs Board, which is responsible for ensuring that the industry complies with the Act, is supposed to be issuing guidelines, but they are unlikely to be available before the end of June at the earliest. "In the meantime," says Rawson, "we must use the Act, and the Regulations and the Exemptions which go with it, as our guidelines." As from June 30, estate agents, business brokers and commercial brokers will have to verify their seller and landlord clients' identities and residential addresses before concluding transactions or establishing business relationships with them. If the client is a company or a close corporation or a trust, they will have to verify the details of the organisation itself, and of its directors or trustees, and its major shareholders. They will have to keep details on file for five years, and make them available to the Financial Intelligence Centre if requested to do so. "There is no need for the industry to panic about this," says Rawson, "because this dovetails quite well with the existing record-keeping requirements for estate agents. Verifying people's identities and addresses ought to be a straightforward process, unless the client lives overseas, or is being represented by a third party, in which case it may not be so easy. "Nevertheless, there is no time to be lost, and principals who have not begun working on their in-house procedures should get started without further delay."