Your profession, plainly · CONVEYANCING
You settle property. Since the first of July twenty twenty-six, the work at the centre of every file you touch — helping people buy, sell and transfer real estate — is a designated service under Australia's anti-money-laundering law. Here is what that means for a conveyancing practice, in about four minutes.
Since 1 July 2026
First, the frame. You are not regulated for who you are — you are regulated for one or two specific services the Act lists by name. Provide one, and you are what the law calls a reporting entity: enrolled with AUSTRAC, running a small program, checking who you deal with. Not a suspect. A gatekeeper.
assisting a person in the planning or execution of a transaction, or otherwise acting for or on behalf of a person in a transaction, to sell, buy or otherwise transfer real estate, where: (a) the service is provided in the course of carrying on a business; and (b) the sale, purchase or other transfer is not pursuant to, or resulting from, an order of a court or tribunal
The everyday gate
Day to day, the visible change is small. Before you provide that designated service, you confirm who your customer is — a couple of extra minutes for the honest ones, which is nearly everyone. The same gate for every customer. Routine, universal, nothing personal.
The program behind it
Behind the counter sits a small program: a risk assessment in your own words, policies your senior people adopt, one named compliance officer, and staff who have been trained. And the Act itself right-sizes it — your steps need only be appropriate to the nature, size and complexity of your business. Small firm, simpler program. Never nothing, but never a bank's program either.
The two triggers
Day to day, two triggers matter. A deal that makes you genuinely uneasy — the vendor you can never speak to, the urgency nobody explains — starts a report clock. And cash at or over ten thousand dollars has its own routine report, though in conveyancing you will rarely see it. The main series covers both, step by step.
Built for the rhythm of a settlement
The Rules were written with your workflow in mind. Initial customer checks for property transactions have defined timing windows, so verification can sit inside the settlement timeline you already run. And professionals on the same transaction can formally rely on one another's checks — one identity check per deal, not one per office.
Write it down
And the habit that holds it all together: write things down when they happen. The check you ran, the question you asked, the call you made. Records keep for seven years — and the record of an honest process is the best protection your business can own.