On 21 July 2026 the Financial Action Task Force published its Targeted Report on Regulatory Challenges from Decentralised Finance, and the message for anti-money laundering teams is blunt: decentralised is a claim to be tested, not a label that lifts a service out of scope. Where an identifiable natural or legal person controls or sufficiently…
A cross-border payment is held due to incomplete beneficiary information. The originator name is present, the amount is present, but the beneficiary field is a single block of free text that the receiving institution’s screening engine cannot parse into a name, a country and a town. The transfer is held, a customer complains, and an…
A relationship manager flags a client as awkward. The country profile is messy, the ownership chain runs through two jurisdictions, and the file would take real work to keep current. The easy answer is to exit. Close the account, decline the onboarding, and the risk number on the dashboard goes down. The CSSF communique of…
Run a single family office in Singapore on the wrong legal basis and you are doing one of two uncomfortable things: managing money without a licence, or relying on an exemption that no longer fits how the rules read. From 15 June 2026, the MAS Single Family Office framework replaces the old case-by-case approach with…
If a Luxembourg credit institution or financial institution ends up on AMLA’s list of selected obliged entities, its day-to-day AML/CFT supervisor changes. Its supervisor moves from the CSSF to a Frankfurt-based EU body that reviews policies, runs inspections, and can impose pecuniary sanctions. AMLA direct supervision is that mechanism, and the data that decides who…
A CSSF AML/CFT sanction rarely turns on an exotic typology. It turns on the housekeeping. The administrative fine the CSSF imposed on 5 March 2026, and published on a nominative basis on 9 June 2026, is a clean example. A Luxembourg specialised professional of the financial sector running a domiciliation business was fined EUR 56,000…
The most expensive scoping mistake a Luxembourg compliance team can make right now is assuming someone else will flag it for AMLA direct supervision. The Authority for Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism picks its first set of directly supervised firms in 2027, and the data that feeds that decision is being collected…
Introduction MiCAR (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) creates the first comprehensive regulatory framework requiring crypto-asset service providers to implement authorization, prudential reporting, transaction monitoring, and incident notification systems. The Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2023/1114) represents the first unified rulebook for crypto-asset activities across the entire European Union. For reporting teams and compliance practitioners, MiCAR…
Introduction AML reporting in Luxembourg is mandatory for every regulated financial institution and obliged entity – failure to file suspicious transaction reports exposes your firm to regulatory sanctions, reputational damage, and legal liability. For compliance officers, risk managers, and AML practitioners in Luxembourg’s financial sector, understanding when and how to file Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs)…