LEGISLATION EXPLAINED
WWFT explained: The law & additional obligations
Everything About the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Prevention) Act: who is covered by it, what obligations apply and how you can WWFT-check.
What is the WWFT?
The Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Prevention) Act obliges financial institutions, payment Service providers, brokers, notaries and other companies to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.
The law is the Dutch implementation of European AML guidelines (Anti-Money Laundering) and imposes obligations on organizations to identify customers, assess risks and report unusual transactions.
In short: the WWFT obliges companies to know who their customer is, where the money comes from and what the purpose of the relationship is (Know Your Customer).
When is a WWFT check required?
A WWFT check is mandatory for organizations that fall under the law. For them, customer due diligence is an integral part of customer acceptance.
This applies, among others, to the following organizations:
Financial institutions
Conduct customer due diligence as a permanent part of customer acceptance and risk management.
Notaries
Verify identity and transactions in legal transfers and contracts.
Real estate agents
Checking buyers and sellers when purchasing and selling real estate.
Trust offices
Investigate complex structures and ultimate stakeholders (UBOs).
Tax advisors
Assessing customer relationships and origins of resources within tax services.
Accounting and administration offices
Checking clients and transactions to comply with legal obligations and file formation.
Real estate agents
Feed WWFT-checks out for rental and real estate transactions.
Lawyers
Conduct customer due diligence in financial or business transactions.
What does this mean in practice?
Client survey
Monitoring obligation
Reporting obligation
What does one mean? WWFT check in practice?
In practice there is one WWFT check out multiple steps within one process. Information must be collected, controlled and recorded, often spread over different moments in the customer journey.
A WWFT check usually includes:
- collecting customer data and documents
- verification of identity
- assessment of risks
- recording the file
Logical on paper, but in practice often fragmented and dependent on slow manual work.
What often goes wrong?
The greatest risks do not arise from unwillingness, but from unreliable processes.
In practice we see that:
- crucial identity documents are still collected via separate emails or channels such as WhatsApp: not AVG-proof and not safe;
- the identity or authenticity check is carried out by employees without specific knowledge or the correct tools;
- organizations 'trust their feelings' instead of being certain About who they onboard.
Bee WWFTcompliance, you cannot afford that: a customer's identity is too important to gamble on. Without demonstrable verification, you run the risk of sanctions, delays in onboarding and reputational damage with supervisors.
Organizations that trust DataChecker
Why WWFT checks are often more expensive than expected
The costs are rarely in the check itself, but in the way it is carried out. Manual work in particular causes rising costs per file.
Common causes include:
- incomplete document submission
- manual checks and corrections
- lack of Overview
- work via e-mail or separate systems
For Finance, this leads to slow onboarding and higher costs. In real estate this translates into delays and less control over files.
WWFT-checklist: this is how you perform a complete check
A good one WWFT-check always follows the same basic structure. Use the checklist below to check whether your process is complete and which steps are often skipped.
Customer identification
- Full name, address, date of birth and BSN
- Chamber of Commerce extract for business customers
- Capture identity document
Identity verification
- Authenticity ID document (MRZ, holograms, chip)
- Liveness check during online onboarding
- Face match: passport photo vs person
UBO investigation
- Identify UBOs from 25% interest
- Consult the UBO register (Chamber of Commerce)
- Verify identity of every UBO
Risk assessment
- Risk profile: low, medium or high
- Sanctions list and PEP check
- Origin of drugs at increased risk
Purpose of the relationship
- Why customer purchases your services
- Record expected transaction volume
- Document expected customer behavior
Dossier creation
- Keep documents for 5+ years
- Audit trail: who did what and when
- Available for supervisors on request
Continuous monitoring
The WWFT-check does not stop with onboarding. A customer relationship changes over time, just like the risk profile. Make sure you keep testing continuously.
- Periodic reassessment (annual at high risk)
- Report unusual transactions immediately
- Report suspicious transactions to FIU-Netherlands
Time saving
30-60
minutes per manual file
With a digitized process like DataChecker this is reduced to a few minutes, without concessions to completeness.
'A WWFT checking becomes a problem as soon as the process does not grow.'
How does DataChecker Help in compliance with the WWFT?
DataChecker helps organizations the identification and verification obligation from the WWFT can be fully automated and made demonstrable. Through our ID Verification and Face Verifytechnology determines whether a customer, UBO or representative is who he says he is.
Our verification processes combine:
- checking ID documents for authenticity, validity and forgery;
- real-time facial recognition with liveness detection and deepfake detection;
- verification certificates and audit trails that meet the requirements of regulators.
DataChecker can be directly integrated into existing KYC or onboarding platforms, but can also be used stand-alone by accountants, financial institutions, insurers or investment firms.
The result:
- ensures compliance WWFT-requirements for identification and verification;
- accelerates customer adoption with a robust, error-free process;
- reduces operational burden for compliance and onboarding teams;
- demonstrably compliant with audits or regulators.
What customers say About DataChecker.
Fast, scalable, and careful onboarding. Read how Randstad, Adecco, and Carriere do that with DataChecker.
Within a few weeks we were going full digital, onboarding several thousand people per day, three times as many as we could handle before.
Hans Hoogerhuis
Head of ICT, Randstad
Hastiness should never lead to incorrect ID and right-to-work checks. DataChecker complements our efforts extremely well.
Kees Rienks
Manager Quality & Compliance, Adecco
We don't want to discover at the last minute that someone is actually not allowed to work or has an invalid ID. That's why we check in advance.
Evelien van Schie
Business Operations Manager, Carriere
WWFT check for real estate agents
For real estate agents the WWFT part of identifying buyers and sellers and assessing transactions. That requires control and speed.
If verification is not set up properly, the entire process will be delayed. This affects lead time, customer experience and conversion.
That is why real estate is increasingly About combining control with an efficient process.
WWFT check when buying a house
When purchasing a home, a buyer will have to deal with a WWFT check via real estate agent or notary. This is mandatory for organizations, but for the user the implementation determines the experience.
A clear process feels professional. A fragmented process causes delays and friction. Here the quality of your verification process becomes immediately visible.
Information security.
DataChecker is complete ISO 27001 certified, year after year, based on independent external audits. This certification confirms that our Information Security Management System (ISMS) structurally complies with the international standard for information security.
Ready for your WWFT make the process workable?
Datachecker supports exactly this process. By organizing verifications digitally and centrally, implementation becomes less fragmented and less labor-intensive.
Organizations receive complete files faster, better insight and less dependence on manual follow-up.
Many organizations do not get stuck on the WWFT itself, but on the implementation.
Of Datachecker turn a mandatory process into a manageable part of customer acceptance.