⚠️ EU🇪🇺: the Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) will begin directly supervising high-risk banks in 2028

⚠️ EU🇪🇺: the Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) will begin directly supervising high-risk banks in 2028

On January 1, 2026, the European Banking Authority completed the transfer of all its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing responsibilities to the AMLA, consolidating functions that had previously been distributed among several institutions. This marked the beginning of the new supervisory framework.

🤔 The AMLA, headquartered in Germany🇩🇪 and established under EU Regulation 2024/1620, will develop a single supervisory methodology, assess the actions of national regulators, and intervene when a national authority fails to take appropriate action.

🤔 National supervisory authorities (such as Germany's BaFin and Luxembourg's CSSF🇱🇺) will remain in place but will increasingly apply AMLA standards instead of their own national approaches.

🤔 The AMLA will also support Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) in cross-border investigations and manage FIU.net, while national FIUs will remain the sole recipients of suspicious transaction reports.

🤔 From July 10, 2027, companies will no longer be able to rely on more flexible national interpretations of KYC and customer due diligence requirements.

🤔 Institutions that may fall under direct AMLA supervision may be classified as high risk based on:

🔵 The nature and scale of their operations, including large banking groups, payment institutions, and companies operating in the electronic money and crypto-asset sectors, as well as crowdfunding platforms and non-bank consumer lenders.

🔵 Their links to jurisdictions classified as high risk within the European Union.

🤔 Approximately 40 institutions are expected to fall under direct supervision.

🤔 The selection process will begin on July 1, 2027, run for six months, and direct supervision is scheduled to begin in January 2028.

🤔 Priority actions for compliance teams include:

🔵 Conducting a gap analysis against the Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR), particularly regarding enhanced due diligence for politically exposed persons (PEPs).

🔵 Reviewing enterprise-wide risk assessments.

🔵 Integrating sanctions screening into employee onboarding processes.

🔵 Monitoring the implementation of the 23 AMLA Level 2 and Level 3 regulatory measures, most of which must be adopted by July 10, 2026.

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