AML inspection guide released

The Law Society of Scotland’s anti-money laundering (AML) team has released a guide to help members understand more about the AML inspection process and how to prepare for an inspection.

The guide is designed to offer a detailed insight into the types of AML inspection that the team do, why each inspection is conducted, the steps involved in an inspection, and what is expected of firms.

It forms part of the AML team’s ongoing work to continually find ways to provide members with focused, relevant materials that aid practices to meet their regulatory obligations.

The guide covers: full assurance inspections, re-inspections (full or limited in scope), risk-based single file reviews, thematic reviews and attestation statements.

In addition, there is an overview of the AML team and its purpose, information on how to prepare for an inspection, how to provide requested documents, an extensive list of the types of documentation requested during an inspection, and process flows showing each step of an inspection.

The AML team encourages practices to use the guide as a useful reference point to understand our AML inspection process and to identify areas that they could improve, such as how AML documentation is organised, to help support the practice should an inspection ever be carried out.