If you're a real estate agent, lawyer, conveyancer, accountant or trust and company service provider in New Zealand, and you're asking whether you need to file an annual AML/CFT report — the short answer is: it depends on what you actually do, not on what licence you hold. Every year firms either file when they didn't need to, or don't file when they did, because they've applied the wrong test. This is the right one.
The window, first, because it's tight
Every reporting entity supervised by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) must submit its annual AML/CFT report between 1 July and 31 August, covering the year from 1 July to 30 June. DIA is explicit that there's no flexibility here:
"The Department is unable to grant any extensions."
If you already know you're a reporting entity, that's your action item — the rest of this article is about how to check.
The test isn't your licence — it's the activity
This is the single most common mistake. Holding a real estate salesperson's licence, being a lawyer, or running an accounting practice does not, by itself, make you a reporting entity under the AML/CFT Act 2009. What captures you is being a designated non-financial business or profession (DNFBP) — meaning you carry out one or more of a specific set of activities in the ordinary course of business.
The Act's prescribed annual report form (Schedule 2A) asks every DNFBP applicant to work through six activities. If you carry out any one of them as part of your normal business, you're in scope for that activity:
- Acting as a formation agent of companies, trusts or other legal persons or arrangements.
- Acting as a nominee director, nominee shareholder, or trustee (or arranging for someone else to do so) of a legal person or arrangement.
- Providing a registered office, business, correspondence or administrative address for a company, trust or other legal arrangement — except where that address service is genuinely ancillary to other, non-captured work you do for the client.
- Managing client funds, accounts, securities or other assets — this catches trust accounts and client money handling, but not simply invoicing and being paid your own professional fees.
- Real estate agency work carried out to bring about a transaction — see the real estate section below, because there's an important carve-out.
- Acting, or instructing on, conveyancing, buying/selling a business or legal person, or creating/operating/managing a legal person or arrangement.
Two things worth sitting with. First, licence plus activity, not licence alone — a law firm that never touches conveyancing, client trust money, or company formation work is a harder case for capture than the licence alone suggests. Second, the reverse also happens: an accountant who merely instructs someone else on a client's behalf for conveyancing, client money management or trust and company work is captured even where the accountant doesn't perform that work personally. Acting as an intermediary is enough.
Real estate agents: the REAA chain, and why residential tenancies are excluded
If you're a real estate agency, the activity that captures you is "real estate agency work" as defined by the Real Estate Agents Act 2008 (REAA) — work done to bring about a transaction. That word does real work. Section 4(1) of the REAA defines "transaction" in a way that excludes a tenancy to which the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 applies. In practice:
- Sale and purchase of land or property — captured. This is the core of what makes a real estate agency a reporting entity.
- Commercial leasing — also captured. DIA's 2026 Sector Risk Assessment states plainly: "Listing and arranging a commercial lease by real estate agents is a captured activity under the AML/CFT Act… customer due diligence obligations apply in relation to the real estate agent's client."
- Residential tenancies — not captured, because arranging a tenancy isn't "real estate agency work" for AML/CFT purposes.
- Ongoing property management once a residential lease is in place — also excluded, this time by regulation 21B of the AML/CFT (Definitions) Regulations 2011. Rent collected as part of routine management doesn't trigger obligations.
- A long leasehold interest that isn't a Residential Tenancies Act tenancy — a ground lease, for example — remains captured. It's the Act's exclusion that matters, not the word "lease."
So a full-service residential agency that also manages rentals is a reporting entity for its sales work, and outside the Act for its property management and residential letting work. That split is normal, and it's worth documenting in your risk assessment so an auditor can see the question was actually asked.
Timing matters as much as scope
If any of the six activities apply to you, due diligence isn't a task you do at settlement or completion — it comes much earlier. For most captured firms — law firms, accountants, conveyancers, trust and company service providers — the trigger is s.14(1)(a) of the Act: customer due diligence is required when you establish a business relationship with a new customer, defined in s.5(1) as:
"a business, professional, or commercial relationship between a reporting entity and a customer that has an element of duration or that is expected by the reporting entity, at the time when contact is established, to have an element of duration."
Real estate agencies are the exception, and it catches people out. Section 14(3) expressly disapplies those general triggers for real estate agents; the timing instead comes from regulation 16 of the AML/CFT (Requirements and Compliance) Regulations 2011, which sets it by transaction type:
- On a sale — due diligence is due once there is a fully signed agency agreement, and before any further agency work is carried out for that customer. In practice: at the listing, not at settlement.
- On a commercial lease — later: before the lease agreement is presented to the landlord. A lease listing still on the market has not yet reached its trigger.
- On an assignment of lease or a sublease — before the assignment or sublease agreement is presented.
Getting the timing wrong is not a technicality. The 2024 National Risk Assessment records that non-compliance has been identified in the real estate sector on "the exact timing of when verification must be completed", with entities required to remediate — due diligence done at the wrong end of the transaction is a finding, whichever direction it goes in.
Who supervises you, and what "not registered" doesn't mean
Since 1 July 2026, DIA is the sole AML/CFT supervisor in New Zealand — the old three-supervisor model (DIA, the Reserve Bank and the FMA splitting different sectors) has been consolidated. DIA's own description of the change: "Today is a defining moment for New Zealand's AML/CFT system as DIA becomes the sole AML/CFT supervisor."
One quirk specific to real estate: there is no registration requirement for real estate agents — DIA names this directly as a control gap in the sector's 2026 Sector Risk Assessment, and follows it with a plain instruction:
"Any real estate agent not enrolled with the DIA as a reporting entity or registered with goAML should ensure it does so."
In other words, being unregistered doesn't mean you're out of scope — it can mean you're a reporting entity who has never enrolled. Enrolment is done simply by emailing a completed enrolment form to amlcft@dia.govt.nz.
Still not sure?
DIA's own advice, verbatim: "If you do not know whether you need to submit an annual AML/CFT report, please contact us at amlcft@dia.govt.nz." That's a genuinely reasonable first step — better than guessing in either direction, since filing when you don't need to and not filing when you do are both avoidable with one email.
Glossary
- Reporting entity — a business or person captured by the AML/CFT Act 2009 and required to meet its obligations, including filing the annual report.
- DNFBP (designated non-financial business or profession) — the category covering lawyers, conveyancers, accountants, real estate agents and trust and company service providers, as distinct from banks and other financial institutions.
- Business relationship — the general trigger point for customer due diligence under s.14(1)(a); defined in s.5(1) as a relationship with an element of duration. (For real estate agents the timing comes from regulation 16 instead — see above.)
- CDD (customer due diligence) — identifying and verifying who your customer (and, where relevant, their beneficial owners) actually is.
- Beneficial owner — the individual who ultimately owns or controls a customer that is a company, trust or other legal arrangement.
- REAA — the Real Estate Agents Act 2008, which defines "real estate agency work" and "transaction" for AML/CFT purposes.
- Schedule 2A — the prescribed form for a DNFBP's annual AML/CFT report.
- DBG (designated business group) — a group of related reporting entities that can share parts of their AML/CFT programme.
- SRA / NRA — Sector Risk Assessment (DIA) and National Risk Assessment (NZ Police Financial Intelligence Unit), both of which a reporting entity's risk assessment must now take into account.
FAQ
I'm a licensed real estate agent, but I only do residential tenancies and property management. Do I need to file? Not for that work specifically — arranging Residential Tenancies Act tenancies, and managing them afterwards, both sit outside the Act. If you never do sale-and-purchase or commercial leasing work, you may not be a reporting entity at all. If you're not sure, ask DIA.
My firm has never enrolled with DIA. Are we safe? No. Because there's no registration requirement for real estate agents, an agency can be doing captured work for years without ever having enrolled. That's not a compliant position — it means you're an un-enrolled reporting entity, not that you're outside the Act.
We're a law firm that only does litigation and employment law — no conveyancing, no trust accounts. Are we captured? On the activities described in this article, probably not — but check specifically for any client money handling, company formation work, or acting as a nominee director for a client, because any one of those brings you into scope even if it's a small part of your practice.
I'm an accountant and I don't touch my clients' conveyancing myself. My clients' lawyers do all of that. If you instruct the lawyer on the client's behalf, or otherwise direct that work, you can still be captured — acting as an intermediary for a captured activity is enough, even where you don't perform the underlying work yourself.
What happens if I file and it turns out I didn't need to? Better than the alternative. DIA's guidance leans toward "ask us" precisely because getting it wrong in either direction creates problems — filing unnecessarily wastes effort, but not filing when required is a compliance gap.
Does a full exemption from the Act mean no annual report? Yes — a full exemption means no annual report obligation. A partial exemption is different; you may still need to file depending on what the exemption actually covers.
We do commercial leasing but not sales. Is that really captured? Yes. DIA states in terms that listing and arranging a commercial lease is a captured activity, and that customer due diligence applies to your client — the landlord, on a lease listing.
When exactly does customer due diligence have to be done for a listing? It depends on the transaction type — for real estate agents the timing is set by regulation 16, not the Act's general rule. On a sale: once the agency agreement is fully signed, and before any further agency work is carried out. On a commercial lease: before the lease agreement is presented to the landlord. Either way, not at settlement and not at contract signing for the sale itself.
Who do I actually contact if I'm still unsure? DIA's AML/CFT team, at amlcft@dia.govt.nz, or by phone on 0800 257 887.
Working out whether you're a reporting entity is the first step. If you are, the next one is what the annual report actually asks — and getting the risk assessment and programme underneath it right, not just the form. Deplexify's NZ AML/CFT service handles both.