Tech Compass Blog

Practical writing on AU compliance data, AASB S2, sanctions screening, and the infrastructure behind regulatory workflows.

How to build an AML-compliant customer onboarding workflow for Australian entities

A practical guide to AUSTRAC-compliant customer onboarding covering entity verification, beneficial owner identification, multi-jurisdiction sanctions screening, and audit trail requirements.

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What the Modern Slavery Act actually requires Australian businesses to report

Large Australian businesses must lodge an annual modern slavery statement. Here is what the Act actually requires and why it matters to procurement teams and investors.

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Food recall compliance for manufacturers, retailers, and logistics operators

A recall notice creates a legal obligation. The businesses caught out aren't ignoring it. They're finding out too late to act. Here is how to close that gap.

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What continuous compliance monitoring actually requires, and why point in time checks are not enough

Sanctions lists change daily. A counterparty clean at onboarding can appear on a list weeks later. Point in time checks don't catch that. Continuous monitoring does.

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How to verify an Australian financial adviser before a client relationship

ASIC's Financial Advisers Register is public. The friction is that rechecking it is slow, manual, and easy to skip. Here is how to automate authorisation verification.

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Five sanctions lists. One screen call. Why multi-jurisdiction screening matters.

OFAC screening alone isn't global compliance. A counterparty clean at onboarding can still be designated under EU, UK, UN, or DFAT sanctions. Here is how multi-list screening works.

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AASB S2 Group 2 mandatory reporting: a 10-step checklist

Group 2 reporting starts for periods from 1 July 2026. This checklist covers every step from determining whether you are in scope to getting your limited assurance engagement in place before the deadline.

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OFAC screening in Python: a complete implementation guide

A working Python implementation of OFAC SDN screening with confidence scoring, entity lookup, and batch processing. Covers the API shape, alias handling, and how to structure the audit trail required for AML compliance programs.

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AASB S2 Group 2 is mandatory now. What a downloaded NGA Factors spreadsheet doesn't give your auditor.

AASB S2 Group 2 reporting has begun. The challenge is not calculating NGA Factor emissions, it is proving where the numbers came from when the assurer asks.

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OFAC screening: what it covers, what it misses, and why it needs an audit trail

OFAC screening is not optional for financial institutions with US dollar exposure. But building a production-grade process around the SDN list is harder than downloading the file. This post covers the name matching problem and what a structured audit trail requires.

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How to check if a US financial adviser or broker has a disciplinary history

FINRA BrokerCheck contains disciplinary disclosures, permanent bars, regulatory actions, and customer complaints for US-registered brokers and advisers. A manual search is not a compliance process. Here is what structured access looks like.

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ABN versus ACN: what Australian entity verification actually requires

ABN Lookup and ASIC Connect are not a production KYC workflow. A complete entity check requires both registries, a consistent schema, and an audit trail. This post explains why and what it takes to build it properly.

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Why compliance teams cannot use raw SEC EDGAR data in production

SEC EDGAR and Federal Reserve FRED are free and public. But free public access is not production-ready data infrastructure. No SLA, no schema versioning, no vendor relationship, no audit trail. Here is what regulated firms actually need.

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AASB S2: How to find out who has to report and when

ASIC has published Group 1 and Group 2 cohort lists but they are PDFs with no API. This post explains the thresholds, the boundary cases, and why knowing who is in scope matters beyond your own reporting.

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NGA Factors and AASB S2: Why the emission factor question is harder than it looks

AASB S2 assurance requires more than a carbon number. It requires version history, access timestamps, and a reproducible process for sourcing NGA Factors. Here is what that looks like.

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