Insurance Companies and Insurance Brokers

The Financial Transactions Reporting Act applies to all insurance companies and insurance brokers in Fiji. Your key obligations under this Act are as follows:

Identify and verify your customers (policy holders) and beneficiaries of life insurance or investment linked insurance policies;
Monitor your customers transactions;
Maintain proper customer records;
Report transactions to the Financial Intelligence Unit;
Implement appropriate internal controls and systems to protect your organisation from being used for money laundering and terrorist financing purposes.

Customer Identification and Verification

You must undertake specific procedures to identify customers (policy holders) and beneficiaries of life insurance or investment linked insurance policies. You must also ensure that insurance policies are opened and maintained in the true name of a customer (policy holder).

Holders of non-investment type insurance policies or general insurance policies are exempted from these customer identification requirements. Thus insurers, brokers or agents may not conduct identification and verification on holders or customers for non-investment type or general insurance policies.

For further guidelines refer to:

Guideline 4 : Customer Identification & Verification
Guideline 7: Politically Exposed Persons
Policy Advisory 2/2007- Customer Due Diligence of Customers Who Have Insufficient or No Official Identification Documents
Policy Advisory 1/2008- Identification and Verification of Customers of Insurance Providers
Policy Advisory 2/2008- Identification and Verification of Clients and Beneficiaries of Employer Funded Group Life Insurance Policies
Policy Advisory 1/2010 - Identification and Verification of a Customer's Signature
Policy Advisory 2/2010 - Use of Referee Letter to Verify a Customer's Identity

Policy Advisory 1/2019 - Establishing Source of Funds

Monitor your Customers' Transactions

You must scrutinize or monitor your customer’s transactions to ensure that the transactions being conducted are consistent with your knowledge of the customer and his or her background.
For further guidelines refer to:

Guideline 1: Suspicious Transaction Reporting
Guideline 6: Dealing with Higher Risk Countries

Maintain Proper Customers' Records

You must establish and maintain records of your customers’ identity, transactions and records of all reports of transactions made to the FIU. Any enquiries made to your institution by the FIU and other law enforcement agency must also be recorded.
For further guidelines refer to: Policy Advisory 7/2007- Record Keeping

Report transactions to the Financial Intelligence Unit

You must report the following types of transactions to the FIU:

All suspicious transactions including attempted transactions; and
All cash transactions of $5,000 and above.

For further guidelines refer to:

Guideline 1: Suspicious Transaction Reporting
Guideline 2: Reporting a Suspicious Transaction by Paper
Guideline 3: Reporting of Cash Transactions ($5,000 and above)

Reporting Terrorist Property

If you have in your possession or your control any property which is owned or is controlled by a terrorist or terrorist group or if you have information on a transaction or proposed transaction relating to a terrorist property, you must report this information to the FIU.
For further guidelines refer to:

Guideline 1: Suspicious Transaction Reporting
Guideline 2: Reporting a Suspicious Transaction by Paper

Internal controls and systems

Other measures that your financial institution must implement are:

Develop and implement internal policies and procedures to comply with the FTR Act.
Appoint a “Compliance Officer” to be responsible for ensuring compliance with the FTR Act and Regulations.
Regularly review your compliance with your internal anti-money laundering and terrorist financing policies and procedures.
Implement adequate recruitment procedures to screen potential employees.
Have regular training for staff on anti-money laundering and terrorist financing issues and legislative requirements.

Insurance Companies and Brokers

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