By PAUL O’DONOGHUE, Senior Correspondent
THE FATF Private Sector Collaborative Forum 2025, the organization’s key summit with private stakeholders, will focus on financial inclusion.
Violaine Clerc, Executive Secretary of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), said the event will also cover beneficial ownership and digitalization. It is scheduled for late March.
Clerc emphasized that FATF’s global anti-money laundering (AML) rules “only lead to real change if they can be implemented in all countries, including the poorest”.
“Being inclusive is also recognizing that the FATF is a part of [a] broader ecosystem contributing to global safety by ensuring financial crime does not pay,” she said.
She spoke at the AML Intelligence ‘Women in FinCrime Summit 2025′ , where female leaders in financial crime compliance gathered to share insights. There, she highlighted FATF’s efforts to support low-income countries, which will be a key discussion at the upcoming forum.
“We will engage in critical discussions with the private sectors on various topics such as financial inclusion, humanitarian channels for NPOs, supervision, beneficial ownership or digitalization,” Clerc said.
She also noted that FATF is “working on synergies with many international partners as well as the private sector and the civil society,” which she said would “leverage our respective expertise.”
Expanding inclusion at FATF
Clerc pointed to the FATF’s new Regional Bodies’ Guest Initiative as an example of its inclusivity efforts. Created by FATF President Elisa de Anda Madrazo, the initiative invites two to three guest jurisdictions from FATF’s Global Network to attend plenaries for a year and participate in meetings.
The goal is to amplify the voices of underrepresented regions. It also strengthens FATF policymaking by incorporating regional perspectives.
“In addition to our nine regional bodies, we have invited the Cayman Islands, Kenya and Senegal as guest countries to better inform our work with voices that can share the challenges faced by their regions,” Clerc said.
“We also launched a project on low-capacity countries and the challenges they face implementing AML/CFT Standards.”
Revised FATF Standards
FATF recently updated its standards to expand access to financial services. The changes focus on the 1.4 billion people worldwide who do not have bank accounts.
In February 2025, the FATF Plenary approved updates to Recommendation 1, which guides countries on applying a risk-based approach to AML measures. The organization also revised interpretive notes for Recommendations 10 and 15, covering customer due diligence (CDD) and new technologies. Updates to glossary definitions further support financial inclusion.
“To circle back to the last point on inclusiveness, those changes have been informed by a public consultation which gathered more than 140 responses,” Clerc said.
She added that the responses came from “non-profit organizations, banks, payment providers, insurers, academics, accountants, lawyers and other international organizations.”
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