AUSTRAC sends information notices to agencies that missed the tranche 2 deadline

What happened

AUSTRAC, Australia’s anti-money laundering regulator, has begun issuing section 167 notices to businesses that appear to be providing designated services but have not enrolled under the country’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) laws. Real Estate Business reported the step on 27 August 2026.

A section 167 notice is an information-gathering tool. It requires a business to provide specified documents or information so the regulator can assess compliance. It is not itself an enforcement action and does not indicate that one will follow. Failing to respond to a notice can result in criminal penalties, and providing false or misleading information carries more serious consequences.

The tranche 2 enrolment deadline was 29 July 2026. Figures attributed to AUSTRAC and reported by Real Estate Business put registrations at 17,970 real estate agencies as of 20 August 2026, out of approximately 45,000 offices nationwide. The same reporting gives a wider count of 39,520 new reporting entities enrolled as of 13 August 2026, against an Attorney-General’s estimate of 89,557.

The notices require agencies to provide records covering their AUSTRAC enrolment, business structure, operations, services, payment methods and brokering agreements, including agency agreements and contracts of sale. They also seek cash-handling policies and arrangements, along with invoices, receipts, purchase orders and transaction records for deals involving cash or virtual assets. Brendan Thomas, AUSTRAC chief executive, said: “We’ve consistently said our regulatory focus would be on businesses that are complicit in criminal exploitation, or those that fail to meet these fundamental requirements.” John Nguyen, founder of AML Partners, described the development as “a very serious matter.”

Why it matters

The sequence here is worth reading carefully. An information notice comes before any assessment of compliance, so the regulator is still establishing who is in scope. The likely purpose is population mapping rather than punishment.

The reported numbers suggest the more useful signal. If enrolment sits near 17,970 against roughly 45,000 offices, then a large part of the newly regulated population has no AML/CTF programme, no nominated officer and no reporting habit at all. This is not an Australian peculiarity. Every jurisdiction that extends obligations to lawyers, accountants, estate agents, conveyancers and trust and company service providers opens the same gap between the legal commencement date and real coverage.

That gap has a second-order effect that matters more than the compliance statistics. Sectors that have just been brought into scope are also the sectors launderers find most attractive, because the controls are new, the staff are untrained and the customer base has never been risk-rated. The analytical question for the next few quarters is not how many entities enrol. It is how many of the enrolled ones can actually detect anything.

Practitioner angle

• If your firm sits in a tranche 2 category in Australia, confirm enrolment status today and document the date it was completed. If you missed 29 July 2026, treat a section 167 notice as arriving, not hypothetical.
• Pre-assemble the record set the notices ask for: enrolment details, business structure, services, payment methods, brokering and agency agreements, contracts of sale, cash-handling policy, and transaction records for deals settled in cash or virtual assets. Accuracy matters more than speed, given the consequences attached to misleading information.
• Banks and payment firms should look at this from the other side. Run a review of customers coded as real estate agencies, conveyancers, accountants, lawyers or company service providers in Australia, and check whether your onboarding file records their regulatory status under the new regime.
• Anyone facing a similar extension of scope elsewhere should build the same list now: which customers just became regulated, and which are clearly not ready.
• The single most important action: identify your own exposure to newly regulated sectors and rate them as higher risk until you have evidence their controls exist.