In remarks at the Italian banking association's annual anti-money laundering seminar, Bank of Italy official Sebastiano Laviola said banks should start adapting immediately to the European Union's new anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing framework rather than wait for the final technical standards. He said the new architecture is now moving into implementation, with the Anti-Money Laundering Authority operational and working on secondary rules and common supervisory methods. From 10 July 2027, the Single Rulebook will become the reference regime for firms' AML obligations, requiring updates to governance, internal policies, risk assessment models and operational processes. Laviola also said AMLA will begin direct supervision from 2028 of up to 40 groups and intermediaries selected on cross-border activity and risk, and that the Bank of Italy has completed its data collection for that exercise and will transmit the information to AMLA by 15 August. The speech also set out the Bank of Italy's current supervisory reading of the sector. Laviola described Italian banks' AML/CFT preparedness as broadly solid, citing the recent Financial Action Task Force evaluation and a roughly 70 percent increase in off-site supervisory actions between 2022 and 2025, but said weaknesses still emerge in governance, parent-company coordination, beneficial ownership checks, enhanced due diligence, customer risk profiling and transaction monitoring. He highlighted growing exposure from remote onboarding, cyber-enabled fraud, crypto-asset service providers and sanctions evasion, and said effective use of artificial intelligence requires strong data governance, transparency over model logic and human oversight. During the transition, the Bank of Italy plans to intensify dialogue with firms and use its guidance role to support implementation and feed market views into European rulemaking. Laviola said the central bank will survey in coming months how firms have assigned the board-level AML responsibility, is conducting an inspection campaign on customer profiling and an ongoing review of controls for terrorism financing, proliferation financing and restrictive measures, and expects first results in coming months from public-private workstreams on emerging fraud risks and remote customer identification.
Bank of Italy2026-07-03
Bank of Italy urges banks to prepare now for EU AML rulebook ahead of July 2027
In remarks at an ABI seminar, Bank of Italy said banks should start adjusting now to the EU AML/CFT framework, with the Single Rulebook applying from 10 July 2027 and AMLA set to directly supervise up to 40 groups and intermediaries from 2028. The central bank said Italian banks are broadly well prepared but still need to strengthen governance, beneficial ownership checks, customer profiling, transaction monitoring and controls for technology-driven fraud and sanctions risks.