You are Wwft-obliged if your organisation falls into one of the categories in Article 1a of the Wwft, the Dutch Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act. These are mainly financial institutions, trust offices, accountants, tax advisers, lawyers and notaries, estate agents, certain traders and gambling providers. What matters is the activity you carry out, not your size. A self-employed professional can therefore be just as Wwft-obliged as a large bank.
The checklist below lets you see quickly whether this applies to you. You can read what the act involves in What is the Wwft?.
Checklist: do you fall under the Wwft?
Do you recognise your organisation in one of the groups below? Then the Wwft most likely applies to you.
Financial institutions
- banks
- payment institutions and electronic money institutions
- bureaux de change
- life insurers and life insurance intermediaries
- investment firms and investment institutions
- crypto-asset service providers
Trust offices
- parties that provide trust services on a professional basis, such as supplying a director or an address to a legal entity
Advisers and professions
- accountants
- tax advisers and bookkeeping firms
- lawyers, notaries and other independent legal professionals, when they assist, for example, in the purchase or sale of real estate or companies, the management of money or securities, or the formation or management of legal entities
Real estate and trade
- estate agents and intermediaries in the purchase or sale of real estate
- traders in goods, when they receive cash payments above a statutory threshold
- art dealers and art intermediaries, for large transactions
- pawnshops
Gambling
- casinos and other gambling providers, including online
Grey areas
Not every case is clear-cut. Pay particular attention to these situations.
- You only do it occasionally. The Wwft looks at what you do professionally or commercially. If you carry out a Wwft activity as part of your services, the act applies to that activity.
- Only part of your work is covered. For lawyers and notaries, the act applies to certain activities. Record which files do and do not fall under the Wwft.
- Your bank asks you for information. Is your bank asking for a UBO declaration? Then your bank is Wwft-obliged. That does not make you Wwft-obliged yourself.
- You operate from abroad. If you offer services in the Netherlands from another country, the Wwft may also apply. Have this assessed by a legal adviser.
Still in doubt after this check? Then consult the website of the supervisor for your sector, such as DNB, the AFM, the Bureau Financieel Toezicht or the Belastingdienst.
What does being Wwft-obliged mean for you?
If you fall under the Wwft, you have a number of fixed obligations:
- map the risks of your organisation and set down a policy
- carry out customer due diligence for every new customer, see What is KYC?
- establish the UBO of business customers
- carry out additional research where the risk is high, for example with a PEP
- report unusual transactions to FIU-Nederland
- retain records for five years after the end of the relationship
- train staff
A Wwft check on a customer
Sometimes people mean something else by a Wwft check: checking a customer. That is customer due diligence. You establish who the customer is, who is behind them and what risk they bring. If the risk is higher, enhanced customer due diligence follows.
The next steps
Are you Wwft-obliged? Then start here.
- Establish your category and supervisor. Then you know which guidance and requirements apply to you.
- Check licensing or registration. For some institutions, such as banks and trust offices, a licence is mandatory.
- Carry out a risk assessment. Which customers, products and countries bring risk?
- Set down policies and procedures. Describe how you carry out customer due diligence, when you report and who decides.
- Appoint someone responsible. Someone must monitor compliance. Read more in What is compliance?.
- Organise your files and train your people. A supervisor wants to be able to follow your reasoning.
Also take the AMLR into account, which applies from 10 July 2027. The regulation moves the rules to European level and extends the list of obliged entities in some areas. See AMLR 2027.
Setting it up yourself or outsourcing
Small organisations often set up Wwft compliance themselves, with a simple policy and a fixed way of working. As the number of customers grows or structures become more complex, customer due diligence soon takes a lot of time. You can then outsource the execution. You remain responsible for the policy and for the decision to accept a customer.