Use case
AML screening for
Real Estate Agencies
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Why screening matters for real estate agencies
Several aspects of the real estate industry make it appealing for possible abuse by money launderers or financiers of terrorism. A number of fundamental strategies, including the use of sophisticated loans or credit finance, the employment of non-financial specialists, the use of corporate vehicles, and others, were discovered from the case studies offered throughout the research for the FATF-led project 'Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Through the Real Estate Sector'.
A magnet for illicit funds
Real estate remains one of the most sought ways to launder money by taking advantage of large sums of money being transferred from one source to another, leading towards creating apparent safe investments through illegitimate transfers of financial assets. About one third of confiscated illegal assets are typically referred to real estate2.
The record-keeping burden
In the UK and many other countries, being compliant additionally means that real estate agents need to keep records of all their customer due diligence measures (i.e., customer identification documents, AML check results and risk assessments) for a minimum of 5 years starting from the date of the end of a business relationship or the completion of the transaction date. In this manner, real estate agencies can prove their compliance with AML regulations when any of their clients is investigated in order to protect their businesses from potentially damaging consequences3.
The challenge
The approach
Real Estate Agencies need to conduct sanction and PEP checks to identify customers and companies who are politically exposed, such as senior government officials, politicians, or their close associates and State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) as these may pose a higher risk of money laundering or corruption. Real Estate Agencies should also assess the risks posed by their PEP customers and implement appropriate AML controls to mitigate these risks.
All real estate brokers and auctioneers are required to implement processes to foresee and prevent money laundering under the Fifth Money Laundering Directive. As a result, there is a lower chance that potential offenders will use the real estate sector to commit financial crimes4.
Why dilisense
In the effort of limiting the risks of being used as a vehicle of illicit flow of money, the majority of real estate agencies rely on widely used AML checks that are commonly burdened with heavy costs. dilisense provides PEP checks, sanction screening and other scans (e.g., against criminal watchlists) for a fraction of the expected market price.
Real estate agents can receive compliance relevant information of their customers’ to assemble profound risk profiles in order to help with spotting sanctioned individuals and entities, banned, blacklisted and most wanted offenders, as well as PEPs. Choose dilisense to speed up your AML process, if required even without the need of installing any software. Contact us today!
04 — Recommended products
The right setup for real estate agencies
Every product screens against the same consolidated database — pick the integration that fits your team.
AML Screening API
Real-time REST API to screen against 10,000+ global sanctions, PEP and adverse media sources with sub-150ms response.
Ongoing Monitoring
Continuous re-screening of your customer base with instant alerts when sanctions or PEP status changes.
No developers? No problem.
Screen thousands of names against the full database directly from an Excel file — no API integration, no engineering time.
Pay per use
A screening API at a fraction of the usual market price
Integrate the REST API and pay per call — no seat licenses, no minimum contract. Start on the free tier and scale into volume pricing as your check volumes grow.
per call, pay as you go
free calls every month
per call at volume
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Under the Fifth Money Laundering Directive, all real estate brokers and auctioneers are required to implement processes to foresee and prevent money laundering. In the UK and many other countries, real estate agents must also keep records of their customer due diligence measures — identification documents, AML check results and risk assessments — for at least 5 years after a business relationship or transaction ends.
dilisense offers batch screening via an Excel tool: a real estate agency uploads its buyers and sellers in one go and screens them against sanctions, PEP and criminal data with no IT integration required. Agencies that want automation can use the REST screening API instead, and customers can be rescreened automatically through ongoing monitoring.
Real estate agents screen buyers and sellers against sanction lists, Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) data and criminal watchlists to spot sanctioned individuals and entities, banned or most wanted offenders, and PEPs such as senior government officials and their close associates. dilisense covers international and domestic sanction lists alongside PEP, criminal and regulatory sources, updated every 60 minutes.
AML checks widely used in the real estate sector often come with heavy costs; dilisense provides PEP checks, sanction screening and criminal watchlist scans for a fraction of the expected market price. Name searches on the dilisense website are free and unlimited with no registration, and the pay-per-use screening API has no monthly fee and includes free calls every month.
References
Swiss discretion by default
Some of our clients allow us to share their names in certain cases — ask us for references and we’ll connect you.
Related industries
- 1 https://www.fatf-gafi.org/en/documents/documents/moneylaunderingandterroristfinancingthroughtherealestatesector.html
- 2 https://www.amlrightsource.com/news/how-to-prevent-money-laundering-through-real-estate
- 3 https://www.estateagenttoday.co.uk/sponsored-content/2021/6/estate-agents-can-now-speed-up-their-aml-checks--heres-how
- 4 https://www.propertymark.co.uk/resource/property-agents-fined-after-hmrc-aml-checks.html