Estate Agents (Prevention of Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism) Regulations, 2021

Estate Agents (Prevention of Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism) Regulations, 2021, provides insights into the real estate agents’ and brokers’ measures to combat ML/FT and report suspicious transactions.

The Council of Estate Agencies, with the approval of the Minister for National Development, made the Estate Agents (Prevention of Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism) Regulations 2021. The said regulations came into effect on 30th July 2021.

The regulations require the licensed estate agent to undertake the following before performing the agency services:

• Entering into an agreement with the client, specifying the terms of the business relationship,
• Assessing the money laundering and terrorism financing risk associated with the client, where acquisition or disposal of the property is involved.

Further, the licensed estate agent must undertake customer due diligence measures, such as –  

• identifying the client,
• obtaining client identification documents and verifying the same,
• identification of the beneficial owners and controlling parties, including directors and senior managerial persons of the entity,
• identifying whether the client is politically exposed or associated with any Politically Exposed Person (PEP),
• understanding the nature of business activities, if the client is an entity,
• applying enhanced measures in case of unusual transactions, or whether the client is associated with FATF defined list of high-risk countries or if the client is PEP.

The Estate Agents (Prevention of Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism) Regulations, 2021 mandate the application of the following measures when performing Enhanced Due Diligence:

• obtaining the source of funds and source of wealth of the client and the beneficial owners, and
• obtaining senior management approval before onboarding any client.

A few relaxations are granted around Customer Due Diligence measures when the transaction is for renting the property and the ML/FT risk identified for the client is low.

The regulations also require the ongoing monitoring of business relationships to identify any unusual pattern of transactions and ensure that the Customer Profile is kept up to date.

Licensed estate agents must perform business risk assessments from a money laundering and financing of terrorism perspective. Based on the outcome of the risk assessment, necessary procedures and internal controls must be designed and implemented, including ongoing training of the staff, having an AML audit function in place, etc.

Compliance with Targeted Financial Sanctions is also mandatory for licensed estate agents to ensure that no business is established with a person listed on the UN Consolidated List or the local list of terrorists issued by Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs.

The licensed agents are entrusted with reporting any potential transaction or client suspected of being involved in money laundering or terrorism financing to the Suspicious Transaction Reporting Officer or the Police Officer/Commercial Affairs Officer.

All the documents and records pertaining to AML/CFT compliance shall be maintained for at least 5 years by every licensed estate agent.