Updated national risk assessment for money laundering published

Isle of Man classed as medium high risk for money laundering overall

Government has published its updated National Risk Assessment (NRA) for money laundering.

It comes ahead of this year's MONEYVAL assessment, which will evaluate the Island's approach to mitigating threats and vulnerabilities.

The update builds upon an equivalent document from 2020, and confirms that overall risk levels remain unchanged, with the Isle of Man classed as medium high risk for money laundering overall. 

But what does that actually mean for those of us not versed in the finer details?

We asked the Minister for Justice and Home Affairs, Jane Poole-Wilson:

The money laundering NRA sits at the centre of a wider programme of national risk assessments, which also includes terrorism financing and proliferation financing.

In previous instances, all elements were included in one singular NRA, but now they have been separated out into individual reports, largely due to the amount of data collected.

The money laundering-specific document shows that 'while threats have intensified, national controls have strengthened accordingly, resulting in a stable but increasingly sophisticated risk landscape'.

Key findings include:

• The global threat environment has intensified
• The sectors with the greatest residual money laundering risk are Banking, Online Gambling, and Trust and Corporate Service Providers
• Increased use of virtual assets, particularly stablecoins such as USDT, for cross-border layering, coupled with AI-driven identity manipulation (deepfakes, synthetic documents), undermines traditional customer due diligence processes

Minister Poole-Wilson says the document's publication marks 'an important milestone in demonstrating the effectiveness of the Island’s Anti-Money Laundering, Countering the Financing of Terrorism, Countering Proliferation Terrorism framework':

You can find the money laundering NRA in full HERE.

Alongside the overall money laundering NRA, government has also published the latest risk assessment for the Trust and Corporate Service Providers (TCSP) sector.

The TCSP NRA confirms that the money laundering risk for TCSPs also remains Medium High, reflecting the sector’s international client base and its use of complex structures.

You can find the TCSP NRA in full HERE.