Learn how to use this guidance (Reform)
Our guidance is a key resource to help you understand your obligations under anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws.
Find out more about the purpose of our guidance, how it interacts with the legislation and understand the language we use.
On this page
- The difference between the Act, Rules and guidance
- Support to use the guidance
- Understanding the language we use
- Recommended reading order
The difference between the Act, Rules and guidance
The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) Act and Rules set out your obligations. From 31 March 2026, these laws will change.
Learn more by reading the future compilation of the AML/CTF Act and AML/CTF Rules.
We’ve published guidance that explains:
- the obligations
- how we’ll interpret them
- what we expect you to do to meet them.
We designed the guidance to help all businesses understand and implement their obligations, while giving existing reporting entities information on what will change. It also includes practical tips on how to meet your obligations in a way that is cost-effective and scales to business size and complexity.
Support to use the guidance
We’ve provided citations throughout our guidance that explain which parts of the Act and Rules are relevant to that particular piece of guidance. It always appears like this:
This section refers to the Act section 28.
We also have a glossary of key terms. You’ll find a link to the glossary term the first time a word that may need explaining appears on a page.
Understanding the language we use
There are many terms and phrases across the guidance that may be new to you. We explain them throughout the guidance, and you can find a full list in our glossary.
We also use specific language to indicate if something is an obligation under the Act Rules or regulations, an expectation or if it’s a suggestion based on good practice.
When we use the phrase ‘you must’ in our guidance, that means it’s either:
- an obligation for your business
- an action we consider necessary in all circumstances to meet your obligations.
When we use the phrase ‘we expect’, this is an action that’s likely necessary to comply with your obligations, but we remain open to other ways you can demonstrate compliance. Think carefully before departing from these expectations as, if you depart from them, we may later ask you to provide information that demonstrates how your alternative approach meets your obligations.
Other phrases, such as ‘you may’ or ‘you could’, are a suggestion based on good practice. You can choose to follow these suggestions or take a different approach that will work better for your business.
Recommended reading order
We have structured the reform guidance landing page to guide you through the process of understanding your obligations. If you’re new to AML/CTF regulation we recommend you check if you may be regulated. If you think you’ll be regulated, read:
- our detailed guidance on what services we’ll regulate and the scope of regulation
- why fighting money laundering and terrorism financing is critical and how criminals are currently exploiting your profession
- our summary of your obligations.
If you’re already a reporting entity, we recommend you:
- read our summary of what will change
- check if any more of your services may be regulated.
If you’re a foreign branch or subsidiary, we recommend you learn how your obligations will be different to service providers operating in Australia.
If you’re in a designated business group (these will cease to exist on 31 March 2026) or you want to save costs by setting up group-wide compliance, we recommend you learn how to set up and operate a reporting group.
Then we recommend you learn about your obligations through our guidance on:
- your AML/CTF program
- customer due diligence (CDD)
- training and personnel due diligence
- reporting to AUSTRAC.
Then we recommend you read the remaining guidance about your other obligations.
This guidance sets out how we interpret the Act, along with associated Rules and regulations. Australian courts are ultimately responsible for interpreting these laws and determining if any provisions of these laws are contravened.
The examples and scenarios in this guidance are meant to help explain our interpretation of these laws. They’re not exhaustive or meant to cover every possible scenario.
This guidance provides general information and isn't a substitute for legal advice. This guidance avoids legal language wherever possible and it might include generalisations about the application of the law. Some provisions of the law referred to have exceptions or important qualifications. In most cases your particular circumstances must be taken into account when determining how the law applies to you.