Setting up a company or trust, and where AML/CTF touches it
You already know how to register a company or draft a deed. This is the same job with one question added: who counts as your customer, and what do you have to check about each of them?
Start here
What this service is
Someone wants a company, or a family trust, or a new structure for a business they are buying. You do the work that brings it into existence: register it with ASIC, draft the deed, get it signed.
That is item 6. It covers creating a body corporate or legal arrangement, and also restructuring one — splitting a company in two, merging two into one, changing what kind of company it is.
It is the service most accountants and many lawyers provide without thinking of it as a separate thing. It is often a small job on a small invoice, and it is still a designated service.
Who does this work
| Who | The everyday version |
|---|---|
| Accountants | Set up a company or family trust as part of a tax or structuring job |
| Lawyers | Draft the trust deed, the constitution, the shareholders’ agreement |
| Trust and company service providers | Company and trust formation as the whole business |
| Insolvency practitioners | Restructuring work that reshapes a body corporate |
The size of it
3.72 million companies, and more every day
Australia has one of the highest rates of company registration in the world. Almost all of those companies were set up by somebody — an accountant, a lawyer, or a formation agent — and from 1 July 2026 that work carries an AML obligation.
Active companies registered with ASIC
The person who asked you, plus every beneficial owner and director
The person who asked you, plus the trustee, settlor and beneficiaries
Creating or restructuring became a designated service under Table 6, item 6
The part most people get wrong
One engagement, several customers
Every other item in Table 6 names one customer. Item 6 names a list — and this is the single most expensive thing to discover late.
When you create a company, your customers are the person who instructed you plus every beneficial owner and every director of the company you are creating.
When you create an express trust, they are the person who instructed you plus the trustee, the settlor and the beneficiaries.
A standard family trust with two parents, two adult children and a corporate trustee is not one customer. Work through the list and it is commonly five or six.
| The job | Who counts as your customer |
|---|---|
| You register a company for a client | The client, every director, and every beneficial owner |
| You create a family trust | The client, the trustee, the settlor, and the beneficiaries |
| You restructure an existing company | The person who engaged you |
| You merge two companies | The person who engaged you |
Note the asymmetry. Creating reaches the wider list; restructuring reaches only the person who engaged you. The Act draws that line because a new entity is where an unknown owner can first be hidden.
What actually gets checked
Six checks, repeated for every customer on the list
There is an oddity worth naming here: you are identifying the beneficial owners of a company that does not exist yet. The answer comes from the documents you are about to lodge — the share allocation, the officeholder consents, the deed.
| The check | What is required | How it is usually done | What stays in the file |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identify each customer | Full name, date of birth and residential address, for every person who counts as a customer | Licence or passport, in person or by digital check | What was collected and how it was verified |
| Work out who the beneficial owners will be | Who will own or control 25% or more of the new entity | The share register you are about to create, or the trust deed you are about to draft | Who they are and how you worked it out |
| Screen for PEPs and sanctions | Whether anyone involved is politically exposed, and a check against the DFAT Consolidated List | A screening tool, or a manual DFAT search | The result and its date, including a clear result |
| Understand the purpose | Why this structure, for this client, now | Usually clear from the engagement — asset protection, a new business, a property purchase | A note where the reason is not obvious |
| Rate the risk | Assess and record the ML/TF risk | Your program’s risk factors applied to the structure and the people | The rating and the reasons for it |
| Keep watching | Monitor for as long as the relationship lasts | Review when officeholders or shareholders change | What you reviewed, when, and what you concluded |
Records are kept for 7 years. How far each check goes depends on risk and on your own AML/CTF program.
Are you providing it?
Doing it is caught. Advising on it is not.
| The work | Caught? |
|---|---|
| Registering a company with ASIC on a client’s instructions | Caught |
| Drafting a trust deed and getting it executed | Caught |
| Splitting one company into several, or merging several into one | Caught — restructuring |
| Converting a company limited by guarantee into one limited by shares | Caught — restructuring |
| Advising generally on which structure suits a client, then referring them elsewhere to set it up | Not caught — that influences the creation without advancing it |
| Creating a corporation under the Corporations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Act 2006 | Not caught — the item expressly excludes it |
| Drafting a will that sets up a testamentary trust | Not caught — “express trust” is defined to exclude testamentary trusts |
The advice line is the one that decides most borderline files. Telling a client a discretionary trust suits them, and sending them to someone else to set it up, influences the creation without advancing it. Drafting the deed advances it.
The testamentary trust exclusion surprises people. A will that creates a trust on death is not caught, because the Act’s definition of “express trust” leaves testamentary trusts out. Setting up an inter vivos family trust for the same client next week is caught.
The provision itself
Table 6, item 6, in the Act’s own words
“assisting a person to plan or execute, or otherwise acting on behalf of a person in, the creation or restructuring of: (a) a body corporate (other than a corporation under the Corporations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Act 2006); or (b) a legal arrangement; in the course of carrying on a business”
Customer: the person and: (a) if the body corporate is a company and the service is creating the company — the beneficial owners and directors of the company; or (b) if the legal arrangement is an express trust and the service is creating the express trust — the trustee, settlor and beneficiaries of the trust. Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth), s 6(5B) table 6, item 6 — Compilation No. 62 (C2026C00274).
Read the customer definition slowly — it is the longest in Table 6 and it is the part that costs firms time. Compare it with the other eight items, which each name a single customer.
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.
- ConveyancingEvery step of a settlement, and how CDD differs from the VOI you already do.Table 6, item 1
- Selling a businessWhen a company or trust changes hands.Table 6, item 2
- Client moneyHolding or controlling someone else’s money or property in a transaction.Table 6, item 3
- Equity and debt financingRaising money for a company or legal arrangement.Table 6, item 4
- Shelf companiesSelling or transferring a company created to be sold.Table 6, item 5
- Company and trust formationyou are hereCreating or restructuring a company, trust or partnership.Table 6, item 6
- Director and trustee rolesActing as, or finding someone to act as, a director, trustee or attorney.Table 6, item 7
- Nominee shareholdersHolding shares in your name for somebody else.Table 6, item 8
- Registered officeLetting a client use your address as their registered office.Table 6, item 9
- Real estate agentsThe agent’s customer is both sides of the deal — and the two sides start at different moments.Table 5, item 1
- Property developersSelling your own stock with no agent in between, and why that changes who the customer is.Table 5, item 2
- BullionGold, silver, platinum and palladium, and the $5,000 exemption.Table 2, item 1
- Jewellers and dealersWhy 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 · Federal Register of Legislation · Compilation No. 62 (C2026C00274)Item 6 and its customer definition, quoted verbatim on this page.
- Professional designated services · AUSTRAC · Guidance, current at Sep 2026The examples of what is and is not caught, and the advance-versus-influence distinction.
- Company registration statistics · ASIC · Published monthlyCompanies on the register and new registrations.
- Register a company · ASIC · Current guidanceWhat registering a company actually involves.
- AML/CTF program starter kits · AUSTRAC · Accountant and legal kits, 2026The sector kits for practices doing this work.
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 engagement is a designated service, and who counts as a customer in it, depends on its own facts.
- The line between advising on a structure and creating one is a judgement. Where it is close, record the reasoning rather than the conclusion alone.
- Figures are as at 27 September 2026 and come from the sources listed above.
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.
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.