Less burden, more balance: changes to NZ’s Statutes Amendment Act

If you didn’t catch the news last week, the Statutes Amendment Bill passed its final reading and came into effect on 27 November 2025. While the industry wasn’t expecting to see it progress until next year, Parliament has accelerated its passage, and it’s a welcome surprise as this will make onboarding customers even easier for your business.

Among the many small updates, the most meaningful change for AML reporting entities is the amendment to the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 (AML/CFT Act). And it’s a good one.

So, what does this mean for your customer due diligence?

Under the old rules, every customer (no matter their risk profile) required full address verification during CDD. Now:

• You still need to collect an address, as part of standard CDD
• But you only need to verify it when the risk profile justifies it
• Your risk assessment now determines when verification is actually required
• The change brings New Zealand closer to international best practice, where obligations are proportional to risk

In short: the rules now match how sensible compliance already should work.

Why this is good news for your business

Relaxing address-verification requirements means:

• Less friction for your customers
• Fewer manual checks for your team
• Faster onboarding - especially for low-risk clients
• Lower drop-off rates
• More time spent on genuine risk, not box-ticking

For small teams, this shift could significantly reduce bottlenecks and free up operational capacity.

What this means for APLYiD customers

As a no-nonsense AML platform built around accuracy, speed and simplicity, this amendment is great news:

• It reduces one of the most time-consuming manual verification steps
• It removes an unnecessary point of failure during onboarding
• And it lets you make even better use of APLYiD’s automated checks, risk assessments, and secure record-keeping

There’s no action required on your side - just keep onboarding as normal. Your compliance decisions stay risk-based, and APLYiD continues doing the heavy lifting in the background.

Updated address-match handling in APLYiD

To align with the DIA’s updated position, we’re updating how address verification works inside APLYiD - giving you more control while keeping your CDD records complete.

Here’s what’s changing in the coming weeks:

• You’ll have a new account-wide setting that allows you to turn off address-match enforcement.
• When this is switched off, address verification will still be conducted, recorded, and stored against the client - but the ID verification will no longer present as "Review" purely because of an address mismatch.
  • Where the address passes, we’ll add a note that the address has been verified - so you’re covered if you need to do Enhanced Due Dilligence (EDD) at a later stage.
• When switched on, address verification works as it does today: mismatches will present the ID check as requiring "Review".
• Your stored address information will still feed into any future CDD, so even if the enforcement is off, your records remain complete and audit-friendly.
• No action needed right now - the setting will default to “on” for all accounts when released. You can switch it off anytime if that better suits your workflow.

This gives you more flexibility, fewer unnecessary declines, and a process that matches the updated regulatory expectation - without losing any of the data you need for ongoing risk assessments.

If you’d like help reviewing your risk-based approach or configuring your workflow for these changes, we’re here to help.

Why the change matters

The government has positioned the amendment as a move toward greater efficiency without compromising AML/CFT safeguards. Their aim: to “provide immediate relief for businesses” while keeping the regime strong and credible.

And for once, that’s exactly what it does.

If you’d like help understanding how this change fits into your risk assessment or onboarding workflow, our team is always here to help.