Significance of business KYC and AML compliance for Lawyers

Even though law firms are not financial institutions, lawyers are still vulnerable to being used for money laundering moves.

For instance, fraudsters use the professional status of lawyers to enhance the legitimacy of the funds or employ them to build shell companies to conduct money through.

That being said, lawyers must be able to detect deviant actions of money laundering and terrorist financing.
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Automation for Lawyers

Risk-based approach for more meaningful compliance

Lawyers must inspect their practices to guarantee compliance with increasingly stringent regulations. Ideally, they should put strategies and techniques in place to verify the identity of clients and ensure they understand the true character and purpose of the business relationships.

Make it easier to fulfill regulatory requirements for AML by fetching your client and staff compliance checks and onboarding into one secure online account.

Conducting these due diligence checks enables you to carry a risk-based approach and bypasses exposing your firm to potentially harmful circumstances.

AML Compliance Best Practices for Lawyers

A fundamental need is the business KYC requirement, which means gathering and verifying identification details and other information for every client and the organizations they are part of.

The following practices help set up tactics to minimize the risk of money laundering or other illegal activity.

Customer Due Diligence

It is recommended for lawyers to conduct customer due diligence at the start of every new partnership and manage to do ongoing monitoring.

Also, identifying customers and beneficial owners is very significant, using reliable and up-to-date source documents.

Ensure Appropriate Record Keeping

As a law firm, proper record keeping is necessary for AML compliance. Lawyers should keep all relevant records, such as those used as part of the customer due diligence steps. It also contains correspondence and business files – even after the business relationship has ended.

Offsetting AML Compliance and Confidentiality

Often there is a strain between AML compliance and client data privacy. Lawyers must preserve confidentiality and perform in their client’s best interests.

Vespia assesses your business to comply with worldwide AML/KYC regulations

Every jurisdiction has its own regulations, which are not always easy to control. Vespia offers extensive data sources for more than 300 jurisdictions and clears the path for better decisions.

With Vespia, you get answers to all these queries with few clicks and less human error risk:

Know Your Business (KYB): Get instant access to worldwide registers and combine business verification, due diligence, and business onboarding in a single platform through Vespia AI-powered automated tool.

Know Your Customer (KYC): reveal the real identity of your customer within a few seconds, and an automated and easy-to-use platform. Using Vespia gives you a global and seamless due diligence experience by accessing accurate data from commercial registers.

AML Watchlist (PEPs, sanctions & adverse media): Vespia screens your customers against global watchlists, identifies Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), and monitors media sources for negative mentions by checking over 4000 AML databases. All in one place.

Ultimate Beneficial Ownership checks: Conduct AML and Identity checks for all persons determined as UBOs.

Streamlining compliance

Handling your business KYC obligations may seem straightforward, but it can also count on your heavy workload. Outsourcing your compliance program to an automated, quick, and safe provider like Vespia can be a life-changer.

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