The AMLCO's report in Belgium and Article 11 of the AMLR

What the AMLR requires everywhere

The Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR, Regulation (EU) 2024/1624) applies from 10 July 2027 for most obliged entities.¹ Its Article 11 sets up two roles. The compliance manager is a member of the management body in its management function, responsible for ensuring compliance with the Regulation.² The compliance officer is appointed by the management body, with sufficiently high hierarchical standing, and is responsible for the policies, procedures and controls in the day to day operation of the entity's AML/CFT requirements.³

The two roles meet in a report. The compliance manager must submit to the management body, once a year or more often where appropriate, a report on the implementation of the entity's internal policies, procedures and controls drawn up by the compliance officer. The compliance manager must also keep that body informed of the outcome of any reviews and take the necessary actions to remedy any deficiencies in a timely manner.⁴

Article 11 also protects the line between the compliance officer and the board. The compliance officer must be able to report directly to the management body in its management function and, where one exists, to the management body in its supervisory function, independently, and to raise concerns and warn that body where specific risk developments affect or may affect the entity.⁵ Where the nature, risks, complexity and size of the business justify it, the two functions may be held by the same natural person.⁶

The Belgian roles today

Our understanding is that Article 9, paragraphs 1 and 2, of the Belgian Law of 18 September 2017 already require a senior manager responsible at the highest level for anti-money laundering and an anti-money laundering compliance officer, the AMLCO.⁷ Keltes holds the founder's copy of the text, not retrieved from the publisher by Keltes, and has not yet checked its wording, so this is our reading and it is marked as unverified. On that reading, the two AMLR roles would not be new for a Belgian firm. What may differ are the conditions attached to each role and to the report.

The AMLCO's activity report

Belgian supervisors publish guidance on this report. The Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) published Communication FSMA_2020_12 of 6 October 2020, with a guide to the AMLCO's activity report as its annex.⁸ The National Bank of Belgium (NBB) published Circular NBB_2022_04 of 15 February 2022 on the AMLCO's activity report.⁹

Keltes has stored these texts but has not yet verified its reading of them. It has not verified which Belgian provision requires the AMLCO's report, how often the report is due, what it must contain, who must approve it, or whether and when a copy must go to a supervisor. This article states none of these as fact. The FSMA's communication speaks of an annual report; that is the FSMA's wording, and Keltes has not checked the rule behind it.

Questions to ask of your current report

Until the Belgian texts are verified, the useful comparison is between the report a Belgian firm produces today and what Article 11(6) asks of the report from July 2027. Four questions follow directly from the text of the Regulation.

First, who draws the report up and who submits it? Under the AMLR the compliance officer drafts it and the compliance manager, a member of the management body, submits it to that body.⁴ Second, does it cover the implementation of the entity's internal policies, procedures and controls as a whole? Third, does it inform the management body of the outcome of any reviews? Fourth, does it lead to action: who takes the steps needed to remedy deficiencies, and by when? Article 11(6) puts that duty on the compliance manager.⁴

These questions are not a comparison with Belgian law. They are a way to read your own report against the AMLR, the one text on this page that Keltes quotes word for word. Where your report already answers all four, the change in July 2027 may be small. Where it does not, the gap is in your own document, and that is where the work starts.

What Keltes is doing

Keltes has stored the Belgian texts, including the founder's copy of the Law of 18 September 2017 and the guidance of the NBB and the FSMA, and will check each provision against the stored text, with a second independent reader, before stating anything about Belgian law as verified. Until the Belgian national layer is verified and released by the founder, nothing Keltes says about Belgian requirements is a verified comparison.

About this article

This article is general information about the texts it quotes, as they stood when it was written. It is not legal advice and does not replace advice on your own entity's situation. Still awaiting verification: the Law of 18 September 2017, including its Article 9; any NBB or FSMA requirement on the AMLCO's report, including its frequency, content, approval and any deadline; and the guidance named above. Only the AMLR quotes on this page are checked word for word against a text Keltes holds.