Recovering the costs of the Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision (OPBAS)

AAT strongly supports the UK’s drive to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. AAT also recognises that establishing a consistent, robust anti-money laundering supervisory regime in the UK is of paramount importance.

We support the decision to retain the minimum fee threshold. AAT considers that the tariff measure of supervised individuals remains the most suitable, and that 6,000 supervised individuals is a reasonable point at which to set the minimum fee threshold. Retaining a threshold mitigates the potential unfairness of a methodology based on a supervised population.

The basis for the OPBAS running costs figure, used to arrive at the fee level under consultation, remains unclear. AAT acknowledges that being able to take account of actual expenditure has enabled a reduction in the forecast running costs for 2019/20 and the AFR but believes much more could be done to explain its costs.