Beneficial Owners, Officers and Managers

IPA Insolvency Practitioner newsletter AML Digest, December 2023

Regulation 26 of MLR17 deals with the approval of Beneficial Owners, Officers and Managers (BOOMs) of firms or sole practitioners. The requirement is that a firm must take reasonable steps to ensure that nobody is appointed or acts as a BOOM unless that person has been approved by the firm’s supervisory authority.

A supervisory authority must grant an application for approval unless that applicant has been convicted of a relevant offence (a list of these offences is at Sch 3 to the MLR17).

The IPA has requested details of BOOMs as part of the 2024 licence renewal process. The last full audit of BOOMs was in 2018 and the information will ensure that we have a current list of BOOMs.

If there are any individuals listed who have not previously been advised to the IPA, you can expect a request for evidence that the BOOM is not convicted of a relevant offence and the IPA will require a copy of a current DBS check.

Please remember that if there are any new BOOMs appointed, their details must be provided to your AML Supervisory authority who will advise of what further information they require. If all is in order, the AML Supervisor must grant authority. Until that authority is granted, a person cannot act as a BOOM and if they continue to do so is guilty of a criminal offence which can lead to a fine or conviction or both. In line with other AML Supervisors, the IPA will continue to routinely review the whole supervised population and also undertake verification as part of routine monitoring to check compliance.