Transaction Monitoring Netherlands (TMNL) has welcomed and adapted its business model and operations according to the EU's new Anti-Money Laundering Regulations (AMLR). Trusting that cooperation between banks and the public sector can support the mitigation of money laundering and terrorist financing, five Netherlands-based financial institutions, including ABN AMRO, ING, Rabobank, Triodos Bank, and De Volksbank, announced that they adopted the AMLR from the EU.

The additional regulations are set to deliver a broad legal basis for inter-bank cooperation and integration via public-private collaborations and address data privacy and information security issues. As part of the joint proposal, TMNL, the five banks are surveying how technologies applied to a subset of information could be leveraged under the current Dutch and EU law to support uncovering money laundering activities that are otherwise complicated to identify when only considering their customers. Through their work, the financial institutions highlighted the substantial potential of this approach while also maintaining increased levels of privacy for their users. In addition, the banks’ current activities were referenced in proposals to modify Dutch law which could enable financial institutions to focus their operations on possible criminal activity.

What are TMNL’s plans? By bringing together transaction data from different banks, TMNL focuses on developing connections between them and offering additional insights into possible money laundering and terrorist financing. TMNL intends to adapt its business model to the new law, which is set to come into effect in mid-2027, with details regarding the requirements and the re-engineering of its operations from current to updated legal frameworks still to emerge. Moreover, the banks and TMNL aim to collaborate with stakeholders in the Netherlands and the EU as they continue to adapt, including supervisors, privacy organisations, and law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, as of the announcement, TMNL intends to begin working on planning and re-designing its operations, with it being set to halt its existing actions and capabilities in the forthcoming period.

TMNL mentions that this can have a substantial impact on the individuals currently employed by the organisations, as it intends to change its focus, staffing, and structure to enable these activities to progress in collaboration with stakeholders. Also, the new business plan for TMNL is set to be developed in the upcoming period. .