A reloadable open-loop card that a customer can top up to $1,000 sits on top of a prepaid payment product account, and Canada’s financial intelligence unit gives that account the same anti-money-laundering weight as a chequing account. FINTRAC’s prepaid payment products guidance came into effect on 1 June 2021. Under the PCMLTFA and its regulations,…
On 28 July 2026, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) launched a joint body to defend the financial sector against cyber attacks that use frontier artificial intelligence. Its formal name is the AI-Driven Cyber and Technology Risk Taskforce, shortened to ACT. For a technology-risk or compliance officer,…
The number that decides whether a firm falls inside the EU clearing obligation is about to be measured differently. Under EMIR 3, Regulation (EU) 2024/2987, the EMIR 3 clearing thresholds stop asking how much a counterparty trades over the counter and start asking how much it leaves uncleared. On 25 February 2026 ESMA published its…
A Canadian bank with a branch in Singapore falls within section 9.7; a life insurance company’s foreign subsidiary is covered only if it carries out similar activities and is wholly owned or consolidated with the company; and a securities dealer’s affiliated London entity can trigger section 9.8 if the statutory affiliation test is met. Canada’s…
On 26 June 2026 the Financial Action Task Force published a report on terrorist financing through social media, instant messaging applications and streaming platforms, and it lands with an uncomfortable number attached. Fewer than 30% of jurisdictions contributing to the FATF report said that this risk was covered in their national risk assessments. That national-level…
On 10 April 2026 the Hong Kong Monetary Authority granted the territory’s first two stablecoin issuer licences, to Anchorpoint Financial Limited and The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited. Both licences took effect that day under the Hong Kong Stablecoins Ordinance, the statute that has regulated fiat-referenced stablecoins since it came into operation on 1…
On 27 July 2026, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) confirmed that it will remake three of the APRA Level 3 conglomerate standards before they automatically lapse on 1 October 2026. The three instruments are Prudential Standard 3PS 221 Aggregate Risk Exposures, Prudential Standard 3PS 222 Intra-group Transactions and Exposures, and Prudential Standard 3PS 310…
On 1 July 2026 the United Kingdom took over the two-year Presidency of the Financial Action Task Force and used its first day to launch the FATF 2026-2028 Roadmap on Combatting Fraud. The launch event, opened by the incoming FATF President Giles Thomson and supported by Executive Secretary Violaine Clerc, set fraud as one of…
On 12 January 2026 the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) published Guidance 01/2026, Custody of cryptobased assets, addressing institutions subject to FINMA supervision and identifying banks, securities firms, managers of collective assets and portfolio managers in particular. The document carries a blunt message: it restates the rules that already govern crypto custody in Switzerland…
On 8 July 2026 the Financial Action Task Force published a global stocktake of public-private partnerships for fighting illicit finance, and the message to reporting teams is blunt: the data that would expose a laundering network usually sits in fragments across separate banks, payment firms and law enforcement files, and criminals move faster than any…