AUSTRAC Began Fining Non-Enrolled Businesses $21,840. Finance Broking’s Scope Is Still Unresolved — and AUSTRAC’s Own Advice Is to Document a Position

What AUSTRAC actually did

On 2 October, trade press across several sectors reported that AUSTRAC had begun issuing infringement notices to businesses captured by the reformed anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism-financing regime that had never enrolled. The amounts are not catastrophic on their own — up to $21,840 for a company and up to $4,368 for an individual, as reported by both Real Estate Business and Accountants Daily — but they accrue daily while the non-compliance continues, which changes the arithmetic for anyone who decided to wait and see.

The regime expanded on 1 July 2026 to cover real estate, legal services, accounting, conveyancing, trust and company service providers, and dealers in precious metals and stones. Existing reporting entities came under the reformed obligations from 31 March 2026; the newly regulated sectors had until 29 July 2026 to enrol. Norton Rose Fulbright has estimated that 80,000 to 90,000 new reporting entities would enter the regime — a figure that puts the scale of the compliance population in perspective.

Enrolment has been uneven. Real Estate Business reported 17,970 real estate agencies enrolled at 20 August 2026 against roughly 45,000 offices nationally, rising to 18,350 by 1 October. Accountants Daily reported the accounting and professional services count moving from 13,550 to 13,780 across the same dates. Each outlet was reporting its own sector’s slice of the same AUSTRAC update, and none of the reporting included a count of how many infringement notices have actually been issued.

AUSTRAC chief executive Brendan Thomas was direct about the posture. “The small number that continue to ignore their obligations should not expect AUSTRAC to ignore them,” he said, adding that “real estate shouldn’t be a safe place for criminals to move dirty money.”

The detail worth holding onto is the method rather than the money. AUSTRAC did not wait for a tip-off or a suspicious matter report. It identified businesses that appeared to be operating in the captured sectors, compared them against the enrolment register, wrote to the difference in August, and is now fining the remainder. Roughly 90 per cent of the businesses it first identified have since enrolled or attempted to. This was a data-matching exercise, and it worked.

Why no broker received a notice

Because nobody can yet say whether the channel is inside the perimeter.

The question has been live since the day the reforms commenced. On 8 July, the FBAA’s regulatory compliance specialist David Carson told Australian Broker the association was “not convinced it was ever the legislative intent to capture this activity so we remain hopeful that we can obtain clarification that it is not captured” — the activity in question being commercial asset finance broking. FBAA chief executive Leo Gagic framed it as a straightforward ask: “Our industry is keen to understand its compliance responsibilities and ensure we are appropriately preparing for any regulatory changes.”

The MFAA and CAFBA had written jointly to AUSTRAC on 2 July. By 30 July, MPA reported that the two associations had secured an acknowledgement that standard commercial finance broking activities were not the intended target of the new designated services, and that the ambiguity would inform the development of guidance.

AUSTRAC’s acknowledgement, as reported on 24 July, was specific: the wording of the relevant designated service — identified by the FBAA as item 4 of table 6, covering the organising of equity or debt financing — could be broad enough to potentially capture commercial asset finance broking, and the regulator’s existing guidance did not explain how it interprets “debt financing”. Gagic’s summary at the time: “AUSTRAC has acknowledged our valid concerns and advised it is actively considering the issue before clarifying its position.”

By 4 August the position had hardened into something closer to a formal reprieve. AUSTRAC confirmed it does not expect finance brokers to begin compliance work until it publishes its position on scope. MFAA chief executive Anja Pannek put it plainly: “When the legislation was introduced, it wasn’t clear whether some traditional commercial finance broking activities were intended to be captured,” and the outcome “means businesses can continue supporting their clients while AUSTRAC works through the detail”. CAFBA chief executive David Bushby called it reassurance “for commercial finance brokers while AUSTRAC finalises its position”.

As at 5 October 2026, that position has not been published and no timeline has been given for it. Broker Daily‘s report on the crackdown that same day carried the state of play in its headline: the AML/CTF crackdown has begun, and broker obligations remain unclear.

The distinction that decides whether this is your problem

There are two different designated services in play, and conflating them is the fastest way to reach the wrong conclusion about your own exposure.

The real estate service

AUSTRAC’s published guidance describes the real estate designated service in terms of brokering, planning or executing the sale, purchase or transfer of real estate, with examples including preparing contracts, conducting title searches and holding funds in trust — and it captures those activities even where the transaction does not ultimately proceed. Simple referrals, general hypothetical advice, short-term leases and court-ordered transfers sit outside it. That service is about the property transaction, not the loan that funds it. Arranging a home loan is a different act, and the credit itself is provided by a lender that is already a reporting entity.

The debt financing service

The live question concerns the separate service covering the organising of equity or debt financing. That is the provision the FBAA, MFAA and CAFBA have all identified as potentially sweeping in traditional commercial asset finance broking — the broker who arranges equipment, vehicle or working-capital finance for a business client.

That is the uncomfortable symmetry. A purely residential book is unlikely to be touched by the open question. A book that deliberately built a commercial and asset finance arm — because residential margins compressed, because the diversification pitch from every aggregator landed — sits in the cohort the associations are still arguing about. The scope question is therefore not purely a compliance matter. It is a question about the part of the business that was supposed to be the hedge.

None of this is something a broker should self-certify. Whether a business provides a designated service turns on what it actually does and on the instrument’s own terms, and AUSTRAC has conceded its guidance is currently silent on the point. This article is general information, not a determination of your status. The place to land a view is with your licensee or aggregator compliance team and, where the volumes justify it, your own legal adviser.

A pause is not a safe harbour

It would be easy to read “brokers do not need to do anything now” — Gagic’s own words to FBAA members — as permission to close the file. Three things argue against that.

First, the pause is about timing, not about the answer. AUSTRAC has not said broking is out of scope. It has said it is actively considering the issue and will publish a position. The two possible endings are materially different, and only one of them involves doing nothing permanently.

Second, “time to work towards compliance” is a runway, not an exemption. AUSTRAC’s own framing was that if finance broking activities are in scope, “we recognise that affected businesses will need time to work towards compliance, including establishing AML/CTF programs and training staff”. That is a generous statement. It is also exactly what the newly regulated sectors received — nearly four months between 31 March and the 29 July enrolment deadline — and the businesses now receiving notices are the ones who treated that runway as optional. A grace period is only generous to the people who use it.

Third, the enforcement method travels. AUSTRAC found non-enrolled real estate agencies by matching visible operators against its register. If finance broking lands in scope, the regulator will not need to go looking. Australian Credit Licence holders and credit representatives are on a public ASIC register. Aggregator panels are documented. Association membership is a matter of record. There is no plausible version of this where the channel is hard to enumerate — and the roughly 10 per cent who ignored the first round of letters are the warning, not the 90 per cent who complied.

The line almost everyone skipped

Buried in the late-July reporting of the MFAA and CAFBA engagement was the single most useful sentence any broker has been given about this period. AUSTRAC advised that where its published guidance does not address a specific issue, businesses should document a reasonable position based on the legislation and retain records of any advice relied upon.

Read that again as an instruction rather than as a formality. It is not a systems obligation. It does not require software, a transaction monitoring build, an independent review or a compliance officer appointment. It requires a written position and a file. It costs an afternoon.

And it is the difference between two brokerages that have both, so far, done nothing: one that can show it considered the question, reached a reasoned view and recorded what it relied on, and one that simply did not look. If the position lands as “in scope from a future date”, both start building at the same moment. But in any conversation about the period between July 2026 and whenever that position arrives, only one of them has an answer.

This should feel familiar. Brokers already work in a setting where contemporaneous records of reasoning carry the weight. The habit of recording why a recommendation was reasonable in a client’s circumstances at the time it was made, rather than reconstructing it afterwards, is well-worn ground in the context of the Best Interest Duty, and ASIC’s RG 273 is the guidance brokers and their licensees work from on what those records should look like. The same logic applies one level up, to the business itself. The position paper is the brokerage’s own file note — and what your licensee expects of your client-level records is a conversation to have with them, not with an article.

The one-page position paper

Six things to write down. A single page is sufficient for most brokerages, and the discipline of keeping it to one page is part of the point.

1. The activity inventoryWhat the business actually writes, not what its website says. Residential, commercial property, asset and equipment finance, SMSF lending, leasing, debtor finance, referrals out, co-broking arrangements. Put a rough volume or revenue share against each. This is the only section that is specific to your business, and it is the section that makes the rest defensible.
2. The provision consideredName the designated services you looked at — the real estate service and the equity or debt financing service — and record that AUSTRAC has acknowledged the scope of the latter is unresolved. Date it. The whole document turns on what was knowable when it was written.
3. The conclusion and its basisFor each activity in the inventory, the view the business has formed and why. “We consider our residential lending activity does not constitute the real estate designated service because the service concerns the sale, purchase or transfer of property rather than the provision of credit” is a reasonable position. “We assume we are not captured” is not.
4. The advice retainedAUSTRAC’s wording was to retain records of any advice relied upon. Attach it: the licensee bulletin, the association member update, the law firm note, the guidance page as it stood — dated, with the author identified. An undated screenshot is worth very little.
5. The trigger and the ownerWhat event reopens the position — AUSTRAC publishing its interpretation being the obvious one, a legislative amendment or a material change in your own activity mix being the others — and the named person responsible for noticing. “The business” is not a person.
6. The review dateAn actual date in an actual calendar; quarterly is defensible while the question is open. A position paper with no review date will be out of date before anyone looks at it again.

What to review this week

• Ask your aggregator or licensee for its written position on AML/CTF scope for your activity mix. If it has one, you have something to rely on and record. If it does not, that is itself worth knowing, and worth asking about again in a month.
• Confirm you are inside the update channel. The FBAA, MFAA and CAFBA have all been in direct contact with AUSTRAC on this and will be among the first to carry the position when it lands. If nobody at your brokerage is reading those member updates, the trigger in your position paper has no mechanism behind it.
• Re-check your commercial and asset finance volumes against where they sat twelve months ago. Diversification happens deal by deal rather than by decision, and your exposure to the open question moves with it.
• Separate your AML thinking from your NCCP thinking in writing. Do not assume anything in the AML/CTF reforms alters, replaces or satisfies your obligations under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act or the Best Interest Duty — they are separate frameworks, and nothing about this pause was said to touch them.
• Write the one page and date it. Then put the review date in the calendar before you close the document.

What to watch next

Three signals will tell brokers where this is heading. The first is AUSTRAC publishing its interpretation of “debt financing” and its position on finance broking; everything else waits on that, and it has no announced date. The second is whether clarity arrives as guidance or as an amendment to the instrument — the MFAA has said it continues to pursue formal confirmation of the reforms’ intended scope, a materially stronger outcome than a guidance note. The third is the next round of infringement notices: Thomas has said more will be issued where necessary, and the sectors they land in will show how tightly AUSTRAC intends to police the perimeter.

The honest summary of the last fortnight is that nothing changed about what a broker must do under the AML/CTF Act, because nobody has yet established what that is for this channel. What changed is the demonstration of what AUSTRAC does once a deadline passes and a business has not acted: it finds them, it writes to them, and then it fines them daily. Brokers who file the fines as someone else’s industry story will be correct for now and unprepared later. Brokers who spend an afternoon writing down a reasonable position will be correct either way — and will hold the one document the regulator itself nominated for exactly this situation.