TMNL assesses the opportunities of new European anti-money laundering legislation

Banks may continue to share data about customers who pose a higher risk of money laundering or customers about whom additional information needs to be collected to determine whether they pose a higher risk. From July 2027, data sharing such as that carried out by Transaction Monitoring Netherlands (TMNL) must comply with all requirements of the European Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR), which is approved by the European Parliament  yesterday. This is evident from the documents that outgoing ministers Van Weyenberg and Yesilgöz sent to the House of Representatives on April 16, 2024. 

TMNL, its stakeholders and shareholders are currently carefully examining what the new European legislation means for TMNL’s work and the possibilities that the new European anti-money laundering legislation will offer from July 2027. They will examine which services from TMNL can contribute to a more effective joint approach to combating money laundering and how the acquired knowledge, experience and investments can be optimally used. 

Cooperation

It is positive that the new European regulation offers more opportunities for cooperation in all European countries between banks and with public parties to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing. Sharing information and cooperation is essential to tackle money laundering more effectively. The main goals of the AMLR are:

1. better protect citizens and the financial system against money laundering and terrorist financing
2. and improving the organization of national anti-money laundering systems.

Because European law promotes cooperation between gatekeepers and through closer cooperation between gatekeepers and public parties, the goals of European law can be better achieved. 

Background

Banks are gatekeepers and play an important role in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing; forms of financial crime that disrupt society. To this end, they monitor the transactions of their own customers. To make transaction monitoring even more effective, five banks (ABN AMRO, ING, Rabobank, Triodos Bank and De Volksbank) started joint transaction monitoring by Transaction Monitoring Netherlands (TMNL) in 2020. TMNL makes it possible to recognize unusual patterns spread over different banks. TMNL focuses on criminal money flows between banks, which individual banks cannot discover themselves. In this way, our financial system can be kept even more secure.

Over the past three years, TMNL has tested various scenarios focusing on human trafficking, VAT fraud and drugs, among other things, to validate whether joint monitoring of transactions provides more meaningful signals than when a bank does this alone. The results have proven to be very valuable. This applies to both banks and investigative services.