Cayman Islands: AML Officers

The Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) announced on 24 September that grace period extensions had been given for the appointment and notification of the appointment of anti-money laundering compliance officers, money laundering reporting officers and deputy money laundering reporting officers (AML Officers) for investment funds.

Technically these extensions have never officially applied to other types of Investment Entity such as investment managers registered as excluded persons under the Securities Investment Business Law, but in practice CIMA have used the deadline references interchangeably in their correspondence with members of the industry.

As we set out in our earlier alert, all Investment Entities which are subject to the AML Regulations have been required to designate natural persons, at managerial level, as their AML Officers since the beginning of 2018.

CIMA had given an initial grace period of up to 30 September for compliance with these requirements to investment funds that were in existence prior to 1 June 2018.

We have now confirmed with CIMA the intention of their 24 September announcement and have set out below the current status as we understand it.

What are the new deadlines for investment funds?

For investment funds that already existed on 1 June 2018 and which are registered with CIMA as mutual funds:

• appointments of AML Officers must be made by 30 September 2018
• notification of AML Officers by making a filing on CIMA’s REEFS portal must be made by 31 December 2018

For investment funds that are not CIMA regulated (eg private equity funds and exempt mutual funds) and which were in existence prior to 1 June 2018:

• appointments of AML Officers must be made by 31 December 2018
• there is currently no requirement for them to make any filings with any Cayman Islands authority regarding the details of their AML Officers

But what about SIBL registered investment managers?

Until very recently it was not even possible to make a filing on the REEFs portal relating to the appointment by a SIBL registered excluded investment manager of AML Officers and CIMA had confirmed to Harneys that those updates could be done when the annual declaration (in a new format) was submitted for the following calendar year.

This means that to all intents and purposes SIBL excluded persons in existence prior to 1 June 2018 probably have until 31 December 2018 to make these appointments and file an updated annual declaration.

Harneys’ investment funds and regulatory team is well versed in all aspects of the new requirements, so please contact your usual Harneys contact if you would like advice on compliance with the AML regime in Cayman or if you have any other questions or visit harneys.com/Cayman. Additional information on Harneys Compliance Outsourcing services can be found here.