Designated services · 10 of 13 · Table 6, item 3

Holding a client’s money, and where AML/CTF touches it

Every law practice has a trust account, and the wording of this item is wide. The relief is in the exclusions — and the first of them is that your own fees do not count.

All thirteen designated services

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What this service is

Held in the middle, on the way through

Sometimes you hold money that is not yours. A deposit before settlement, sale proceeds before they go to the seller, funds sitting in escrow while a condition is met. The money belongs to the client; you are just holding it.

Item 3 is about that. Not only cash — it reaches accounts, shares, cryptocurrency and any other property you hold, control or manage for somebody.

It is the item that worries practices most, because it sounds like it swallows every trust account in the country. It does not, and the reason is in the next section.

A person standing behind a counter with a hand on a locked box, a client either side — Money that belongs to somebody else

What it reaches

The five categories in item 3

Category	The everyday version
Money	Cash in a trust account, settlement funds, deposits
Accounts	Authority to operate somebody else’s bank account
Securities and securities accounts	Shares and the accounts that hold them
Virtual assets	Cryptocurrency held or controlled for a client
Other property	Anything else of value held in a transaction

The shape of it

Four things worth fixing in your head

The deciding words

“in a transaction”

Money held as part of a transaction, not money held as such

Exclusions

Six

Section 6(5C) carries more exclusions than any other item in Table 6

Your own fees

Excluded

Taking payment for your own work is not a designated service

Captured since

1 Jul 2026

Client money became a designated service under Table 6, item 3

The question every practice asks first

“Is my trust account now a designated service?”

Not because it is a trust account. Only when the money is held as part of a transaction you are assisting with.

Those words are the whole test. Money held because you are helping someone plan or execute a transaction is within item 3. Money sitting in trust for some other reason may not be.

Then come the exclusions. Item 3 carries six of them, in subsection 6(5C) — more than any other item in Table 6 — and they exist to keep ordinary practice out of the regime. Two matter to almost everyone:

Your own fees are excluded. Taking payment for your own goods or services is not a designated service. Billing a client and being paid is just being paid.
A trust account attached to no other designated service is excluded where the money is for payments reasonably incidental to work that is not a designated service. The Act’s own example is fees paid to a barrister.

So a litigation practice that holds money only for its own fees and disbursements, and provides no other designated service, is in a very different position from a conveyancing practice holding settlement funds.

Are you providing it?

Whose money, and what for

Money-handling, sorted

The arrangement	Caught?
Managing sale proceeds or purchase funds for a client in escrow	Caught
Holding money or property before it is settled as trust property on the creation of an express trust	Caught
Holding authority to pay from a client’s bank or securities account, including under a power of attorney	Caught
Taking payment for your own goods or services	Not caught — excluded by paragraph 5C(a)
Operating a trust account where you provide no other designated service, and the money is for payments reasonably incidental to a non-designated service	Not caught — excluded by paragraph 5C(b)
Receiving a judgment sum into trust and paying it on, where the money is payable under a court or tribunal order	Not caught — excluded

The third row surprises people. You do not have to hold the money to be caught — holding the authority to move somebody else’s money is enough. A power of attorney over a client’s account is within item 3 even though nothing passes through your books.

What actually gets checked

Six checks, and this is where source of funds lives

Across the thirteen services, this is the one where the money is physically in your hands. That makes source of funds a live question here more often than anywhere else, and it makes the monitoring obligation concrete: you can see the payments.

This is the service where the money is physically in your hands, so source of funds comes up here more often than anywhere else.

The checks, how they are done, and what you keep

The check	What is required	How it is usually done	What stays in the file
Identify the customer	Full name, date of birth and residential address of the person whose money you hold	Licence or passport, in person or by digital check	What was collected and how it was verified
Look through the entity	If the client is a company or trust, who owns or controls it	ASIC extract, share register, trust deed	Who they are and the document relied on
Screen for PEPs and sanctions	Whether the client is politically exposed, and a check against the DFAT Consolidated List	A screening tool, or a manual DFAT search	The result and its date
Understand the transaction	What the money is for, and why it is moving through you	Usually plain — a settlement, a completion payment	A note where it is not plain
Source of funds	In higher-risk cases, where the money came from	This item is where the question arises most often, because you are the one holding it	The explanation and any evidence sought
Watch the movement	Monitor the relationship and the flows	Third-party payments in, redirected payments out, and round-figure deposits that do not match the deal	What you reviewed, when, and what you concluded

Records are kept for 7 years. These obligations sit on top of the trust accounting rules your professional body already imposes — they do not replace them.

The provision itself

Table 6, item 3, in the Act’s own words

THE ACT — s 6(5B) TABLE 6, ITEM 3

“receiving, holding and controlling (including disbursing) or managing a person’s: (a) money; or (b) accounts; or (c) securities and securities accounts; or (d) virtual assets; or (e) other property; as part of assisting the person in the planning or execution of a transaction, or otherwise acting for or on behalf of a person in a transaction, in the course of carrying on a business (other than in a circumstance covered by subsection (5C))”

Customer: the person. Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth), s 6(5B) table 6, item 3 — Compilation No. 62 (C2026C00274).

The closing words do the work: “other than in a circumstance covered by subsection (5C)”. Read (5C) alongside the item — it is where the six exclusions live, and it is as much a part of the test as the item itself. The Table 6 reference page sets them out in full.

The thirteen designated services

One article for each service you can select when you enrol

13 of 13 written so far. The rest are in progress.

Professional services

Conveyancing
Every step of a settlement, and how CDD differs from the VOI you already do.
Table 6, item 1
Selling a business
When a company or trust changes hands.
Table 6, item 2
Client moneyyou are here
Holding or controlling someone else’s money or property in a transaction.
Table 6, item 3
Equity and debt financing
Raising money for a company or legal arrangement.
Table 6, item 4
Shelf companies
Selling or transferring a company created to be sold.
Table 6, item 5
Company and trust formation
Creating or restructuring a company, trust or partnership.
Table 6, item 6
Director and trustee roles
Acting as, or finding someone to act as, a director, trustee or attorney.
Table 6, item 7
Nominee shareholders
Holding shares in your name for somebody else.
Table 6, item 8
Registered office
Letting a client use your address as their registered office.
Table 6, item 9

Real estate

Real estate agents
The agent’s customer is both sides of the deal — and the two sides start at different moments.
Table 5, item 1
Property developers
Selling your own stock with no agent in between, and why that changes who the customer is.
Table 5, item 2

Bullion and precious goods

Bullion
Gold, silver, platinum and palladium, and the $5,000 exemption.
Table 2, item 1
Jewellers and dealers
Why the $10,000 line is about how the customer pays, not what they buy.
Table 2, item 2

Sources

Where every figure here comes from

Data as at 27 September 2026.

Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006, s 6(5B) table 6 and s 6(5C) · Federal Register of Legislation · Compilation No. 62 (C2026C00274)
Item 3, quoted verbatim on this page, and the six exclusions in subsection (5C).
Professional designated services · AUSTRAC · Guidance, current at Sep 2026
Worked examples of what item 3 reaches and what the exclusions keep out.
Operating trust accounts · The Law Society of NSW · Current guidance
The trust accounting obligations that already apply to law practices, quite separately from AML/CTF.
Handling client monies · CA ANZ · Current guidance
The equivalent obligations for accountants in public practice.

Before you rely on this

This content is general information only. It is not legal, financial or compliance advice. Organisations should check AUSTRAC guidance, legislation, their own AML/CTF Program and professional advice where needed.

Whether a particular holding is within item 3, and whether an exclusion applies, depends on the facts. The six exclusions in s 6(5C) are summarised here, not reproduced in full.
Your trust accounting obligations under professional rules are separate and continue unchanged. Nothing here addresses them.
Current as at 27 September 2026.

Lex-AML supports compliance workflows and record keeping. It does not provide legal advice, does not guarantee compliance, and does not replace professional judgement or advice from a qualified AML/CTF adviser or legal professional.

Why a technology company writes this

GetPost Labs is a technology company. We are not a law firm and not a compliance adviser, and this page is not a substitute for either.

We build Lex-AML. To build it properly we had to understand these obligations the way the people carrying them do, so we researched them with small and medium practices across the affected sectors — how the work actually runs, where the law lands inside it, and which questions were hardest to get a straight answer to. Publishing what we found is how we check that we have understood a requirement before we build for it.

That understanding is also what we bring to a conversation. No two practices run a matter the same way, and tooling that assumes one way of working fits almost nobody. We would rather start from how you already work — your intake, your file, your sign-off, the software you already pay for — and shape the compliance work around that than hand you a process and ask you to adopt it.

So this is an offer of capability, not a pitch. If Lex-AML turns out to fit your practice, we would like to work on it with you. If it does not, what is written on this page stands on its own, and every source it rests on is listed above so you can check it yourself.