Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

A: Money laundering is the varied and often complex process by which individuals and/or entities seek to “launder” (disguise or hide) the proceeds of illegal activities in order to make them appear legitimate.

A: Terrorist financing is the act of providing financial support to terrorists or terrorist organisations to enable them to carry out terrorist acts.

A: Know Your Customer is a general term used by regulators and industry requiring reporting entities to conduct various validations necessary to ensure that they have adequately identified the customer/investor prior to providing the designated product or service.

A: Ongoing Customer Due Diligence refers to the obligation BlackRock has to monitor customers and their transactions on an ongoing basis.

A: Suspicious matters are events, patterns of behaviour or transactions that are unusual or that could indicate that a customer is involved in taxation fraud, an offense against the Commonwealth, State or Territory law, in breach of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, money laundering or terrorism financing.  As the provider of a designated service, BlackRock must report any suspicious matters to AUSTRAC within the required timeframes as defined by AUSTRAC.  A suspicious matter report is a report that is lodged with AUSTRAC when a reporting entity (such as BlackRock) has reasonable grounds to suspect that a customer, transaction or proposed transaction is suspicious with reference to Section 41 of the AML legislation.

A: The AML legislation will provide law enforcement agencies with high quality financial intelligence, to assist in the detection and prevention of terrorist activity and the laundering of proceeds of crime, allowing the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) increased opportunities to detect instances where apparently legitimate transactions and activities are in fact being used for money laundering and terrorism financing.

A: In accordance with the AML legislation, we are generally not required to identify investors that were BlackRock investors prior to 31 January 2008 (known as pre-commencement customers).

We will be required to verify the identity of pre-existing customers that are setting up a new investment in an alternative name (for example, company, joint account).

We may from time to time be required to identify a pre-commencement customer and reserve the right to request the necessary identification information and/or documentation to enable us to facilitate the identification/verification.

A: We will not be able to provide the designated product/service (that is, accept an application to invest in a fund) to customers that do not or are unable to provide the appropriate level of identification.

A: The Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) applies. BlackRock will only collect personal information for the purpose of the relevant transaction and to enable us to comply with our obligations under the AML/CTF legislation. An investor’s personal information cannot and will not be collected or used for any alternate use or need.