8th July 2020

Recently the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (“FIAU”) had held a technical workshop with both credit and financial institutions on the development and deployment of a centralised registry to hold data on determinate bank and payment accounts as well as on safe custody services. 

Notwithstanding the current situation, the FIAU is pleased to announce that work in relation to the Central Bank Account Registry (CBAR) Project is at the final stages and the FIAU is now in a position to provide more insights into, and explanations of, the registration procedure to the reporting portal, the demonstration of the files transfer system, to all entities that will be required to upload data through the CBAR system.

About the CBAR Project

Through the recent amendments to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act of 7 February 2020, the FIAU’s functions have been widened to also include the establishment, management and administration of the CBAR system.

The CBAR systemis intended to be a registry system with the scope of gathering high level information on:

• IBAN identifiable accounts
• Safety Deposit Boxes
• Safe-Custody Services

The CBAR system will also gather information in relation to natural and non-natural persons who own, control, manage or otherwise benefit from any of the abovementioned products and services.

All credit institutions and financial institutions that offer the aforementioned products and services, will be required to register through the CBAR system and to upload relevant data through the CBAR system, which data has to be kept up to date. A copy of the relevant subsidiary legislation and related guidance was also be made available to all concerned parties for consultation.

Workshop Details

The FIAU would therefore like to invite money laundering reporting officers (“MLROs”) and IT technical officials who will be involved in the registration and data upload procedure to attend for a CBAR technical workshop. Unfortunately, in view of the current circumstances and the Covid-19 measures, it is not possible to meet in person. This session will therefore be held online as a webinar. An invitation link will be sent to the MLROs of all those institutions who offer accounts identifiable by IBANs and of those credit institutions who offer safe custody services.

Please find below the Date and Time of the webinar.

Credit Institutions – 20^th July 2020 from 9:00 – 11:00

Financial Institutions – 20^th July 2020 from 12:00 – 14:00

Registration to this webinar is required:

Course Title: CBAR – Technical Workshop for the Demonstration of Registration and Reporting Portal

Link: https://courses.fiaumalta.org/courses/

Please choose the correct course related to your entity (Credit or Financial Institution)

While the FIAU understands you might have other commitments, you are all highly encouraged to make the relevant officers available to attend the webinar. In the event that the MLRO and/or the relative IT officers are unable to attend, you are invited to delegate attendance to another officer within your entity that may provide the details of the information relayed by the FIAU during the webinar.

Agenda

1. Introduction
   • About the project
   • Updated Timeline
2. Update from the Legal team
   • Virtual IBANs
   • Other Matters
3. Registration Process
4. Data Loading Demonstration
   • File Transfer
   • Data Submission Validation Result
   • Entity and User Management
   • Schema Reference and Documentation
   • API Details
5. Questions and Answers

Should you have any questions both before, and after the webinar, you are kindly requested to direct your queries to a dedicated support email: [email protected]

Downloads

CBAR Technical Workshop – Reporting Portal and API (Public) Presentation Slides