Bank of Italy Regulation re compliance to EBA Guidelines on the use of remote customer onboarding solutions

On 22 November 2022, EBA published its Guidelines on the use of remote customer onboarding solutions under Article 13(1) of Directive (EU) 2015/849 (4AMLD) (“Guidelines”).

On 15 June 2023, the Bank of Italy declared its intention to comply with the Guidelines and adopted the necessary Regulation to adapt the domestic AML rules. To this end, the Bank of Italy amended the existing Regulation on Customer Due Diligence of 30 July 2019 and, in particular, repealed the video-identification procedure provided therein which was considered a means of remote onboarding satisfying AML requirements.

The Bank of Italy also opened a public consultation on the same day in order to:

• totally or partially extend the applicability of the Guidelines to regulated intermediaries not currently subject to the provisions set out therein and, in particular, Italian financial intermediaries pursuant to Article 106 of the Consolidated Banking Act, fiduciary companies, micro-credit providers etc; and
• set at 2 October 2024, the deadline for obliged entities to comply with the Guidelines with respect to all the remote onboarding solutions adopted (while the Guidelines will apply from 2 October 2023 on new or amended remote onboarding solutions adopted by obliged entities and on the applicability of such solutions to new clients).

The interested parties will have 60 days from the publication of the consultation to send contributions and comments, if any.

Next steps

The Guidelines as well as the revised Bank of Italy Regulation on Customer Due Diligence will be applicable starting from 2 October 2023.

The public consultation is available here in Italian only.

Authored by Jeffrey Greenbaum, Elisabetta Zeppieri, and Claudia Colomba.