Tranche 2, plainly · Episode 9
Strip this whole regime back to one idea, and it is this. Memory. The ability to show, years later, what you knew and what you did. That is what records are — and the law is precise about them.
The point of everything else
Every check you run, every decision you make, ends in a record. Not for its own sake — so that if anyone ever asks, the answer is a document, not a memory. Records are the evidence the whole regime is built to produce.
(3) A person who is or was a reporting entity must retain a record referred to in subsection (1) for a period of 7 years beginning on the day the record is made.
Two clocks, both seven years
There are actually two clocks, and both run seven years. Transaction records — seven years from when the record is made. Customer records — seven years from when the relationship ends. Different starts. Same length.
That is the discipline. In this regime, if it isn't recorded, for practical purposes it didn't happen. The work isn't the paperwork — but the paperwork is the proof.
So build every habit around the record. Seven years of memory, ready to show. Do that, and a hard question one day becomes a calm answer.