Designated services · 6 of 13 · Table 6, item 7

Holding an office for someone else, and where AML/CTF touches it

If you act as a director, secretary, partner, trustee or attorney on somebody’s behalf — or find someone else to do it — that is a designated service, and the person who asked you is your customer.

All thirteen designated services

Start here

What this service is

Somebody sits; somebody else asked

Companies and trusts need people in named positions. A company needs at least one director. A trust needs a trustee. Sometimes the person who owns the thing cannot or does not want to fill the role — an overseas owner cannot meet the resident director requirement, a family does not want to run its own trustee.

So they ask a professional to hold the position instead. That is item 7: acting as a director, secretary, attorney, partner or trustee on behalf of somebody else.

The Act calls that somebody else the nominator, and they are your customer — not the company whose board you join.

The roles it reaches

Positions covered by item 7

The role	Why someone asks for it
Director or secretary of a company	Somebody has to hold the office; the owner may not want to, or may not be able to
Power of attorney of a body corporate or legal arrangement	Someone able to sign for the entity
Partner in a partnership	A name on the partnership, held for somebody else
Trustee of an express trust	A professional trustee, commonly a trustee company
Anything functionally equivalent	A catch-all, so a foreign structure with a differently named office is still caught

The shape of it

Four things worth fixing in your head

The customer

The nominator

The person on whose behalf the role is filled — not the company itself

Arranging counts

Yes

Finding somebody else to take the role is caught as squarely as taking it yourself

Roles covered

Five

Director, secretary, attorney, partner, trustee — plus anything functionally equivalent

Captured since

1 Jul 2026

These roles became a designated service under Table 6, item 7

The part most firms miss

Arranging it counts, even if you never hold the role

Read the opening words again: “acting as, or arranging for another person to act as”.

A firm that has a rule against its people taking client directorships can still be providing this service. If a client asks you to find someone, and you find someone, you have arranged it. The obligation is yours even though the office is not.

The opposite trap is equally common: assuming that because a staff member holds the role personally, it is their private arrangement. If the firm put them forward in the course of its business, the firm arranged it.

The word that settles the boundary is nominator. There has to be somebody on whose behalf the role is filled. Sitting on the board of your own company has no nominator, so it is not caught.

Are you providing it?

Somebody asked, and a role got filled

Office-holding arrangements, sorted

The arrangement	Caught?
You provide a nominee director for a client’s company	Caught — acting
You arrange for a staff member to act as secretary of a client’s company	Caught — arranging
You act as professional trustee of an express trust on the settlor’s instruction	Caught — acting
You introduce a client to an outside professional who takes the directorship	Caught — arranging
You sit on the board of your own company	Not caught — there is no nominator
You act in a fiduciary role because a court or tribunal ordered it	Not caught — expressly excluded
You act as trustee of a regulated debtor’s estate under Schedule 2 to the Bankruptcy Act 1966	Not caught — expressly excluded

The two exclusions both have the same shape: you are there because the law put you there, not because a client asked. A court-appointed fiduciary and a bankruptcy trustee have no nominator, so neither is caught.

What actually gets checked

Six checks, and one uncomfortable question

The purpose check is the one that matters here, and it is the one people skip because it feels rude. There are good reasons to want a professional in an office and there are bad ones, and a nominee arrangement is a recognised way to put distance between an owner and a company. Asking why is the job.

The loop on the left is the point. This is a continuing service — the obligation does not end when you take the role, it runs for as long as you hold it.

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 nominator	Full name, date of birth and residential address of the person on whose behalf you act	Licence or passport, in person or by digital check	What was collected and how it was verified
Look through the entity	Who owns or controls the company or trust you are taking a role in	ASIC extract, share register, trust deed	Who they are and the document relied on
Screen for PEPs and sanctions	Whether the nominator 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 purpose	Why this person needs someone else to hold the office	Sometimes plain — an overseas owner needs a resident director. Sometimes it is the question	The explanation, recorded
Rate the risk	Assess and record the ML/TF risk of the nominator	Your program’s risk factors applied to the person and the structure	The rating and the reasons
Keep watching	Monitor for as long as you hold the role	These run for years — review on any change of ownership or control	What you reviewed, when, and what you concluded

Records are kept for 7 years. This is a continuing service, so monitoring runs for as long as the role is held.

The provision itself

Table 6, item 7, in the Act’s own words

THE ACT — s 6(5B) TABLE 6, ITEM 7

“acting as, or arranging for another person to act as, any of the following, on behalf of a person (the nominator), in the course of carrying on a business: (a) a director or secretary of a company; (b) a power of attorney of a body corporate or legal arrangement; (c) a partner in a partnership; (d) a trustee of an express trust; (e) a position in any other legal arrangement that is functionally equivalent to a position mentioned in paragraphs (a) to (d)”

Customer: the nominator. Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth), s 6(5B) table 6, item 7 — Compilation No. 62 (C2026C00274).

Paragraph (e) is worth noticing. It catches any position “functionally equivalent” to the four named ones, so a foreign structure with a differently named office does not escape by vocabulary. The nearest neighbour to this item is nominee shareholding — same idea, applied to ownership rather than office.

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 money
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 rolesyou are here
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 · Federal Register of Legislation · Compilation No. 62 (C2026C00274)
Item 7 and its customer definition, quoted verbatim on this page.
Professional designated services · AUSTRAC · Guidance, current at Sep 2026
The worked examples of acting and arranging, and the exclusions.
Directors’ duties and the resident director requirement · ASIC · Current guidance
What holding an office in an Australian company involves.
AML/CTF program starter kits · AUSTRAC · Accountant and legal kits, 2026
The 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 arrangement is a designated service depends on its own facts, including whether there is a nominator and whether it is done in the course of carrying on a business.
Holding an office carries its own duties under the Corporations Act and general law, quite separately from anything on this page.
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.

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