According to Section 35 Wwft, a financial institution must ensure that its employees and day-to-day policymakers are familiar with the provisions of the Wwft. They must receive periodic training. On this glossary page, we describe the importance of Wwft training.
Why is Wwft training important?
Wwft training is important to stay up to date with the current laws and regulations relating to your contribution in combating money laundering and terrorist financing. Legislation is constantly changing and so is the effort expected of you and your organisation. Supervisors find that adequate training is not always or sufficiently provided.
The purpose of training is to ensure that employees are sufficiently able to recognise suspicious, unusual transactions. They should also be able to conduct a customer due diligence properly and completely. Both at customer acceptance and during the relationship with a customer (periodic or incident-driven test, transaction monitoring). It is therefore advisable to link training to your formulated policy and integrity risk appetite. And supplement these with examples from practice. Only in this way can you be sure that your employees are aware of their responsibility to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.
Wwft training course: for whom?
A Wwft course is mandatory for employees involved in Customer Due Diligence activities to a greater or lesser extent. Day-to-day policymakers must also be adequately trained. It therefore concerns:
- Employees (and their managers) involved in assessing the integrity of existing customers and new customers.
- Employees (and their managers) involved in processing and/or assessing transactions for clients. This brings mostly all employees with customer contact into scope.
- Daily policymakers in their role as ultimately responsible for compliance with the legal provisions under the Wwft.
Types of Wwft trainings
The ways in which you can offer training to your employees are free of fixed form. You can think of training in the form of (in-house) training courses, e-learning modules or awareness sessions. It is important that you can substantiate how your chosen training meets the training requirement of the Wwft. In doing so, you should also be able to indicate which training courses you offer to your employees annually, by whom and how often they are attended. This allows you to keep an overview of your employees’ level of knowledge.
Wwft trainings from The Ministry of Compliance
Through our training institute, The Ministry of Compliance, we offer various Wwft courses. Our Wwft Awareness and Sanctions Regulation Awareness e-learnings offer basic knowledge of the Wwft and Sanctions Act. To deepen your knowledge, you can then follow the Wwft in-depth courses Customer Investigation and Transaction Monitoring.
You can also come to us if you find a standard programme inadequate and need training tailored to your own organisation’s system. We regularly create tailor-made programmes for our clients, combining our Wwft courses with one or more (online) sessions. Read more about this in this case study or contact us. We will work with you to design a programme that fits your organisation perfectly.