Kuwait’s financial regulatory authorities have tightened requirements for banks and other financial institutions to provide complete, accurate and electronically searchable financial data to the Financial Investigations Department, with responses to its requests required within one working day.
The measures are aimed at strengthening Kuwait’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing framework, improving the quality of financial analysis and enabling faster tracking of fund movements.
Under the directive, banks, exchange companies, finance companies, electronic payment service providers and electronic money service providers must promptly provide the required information, data and notifications, including account statements and transaction records in an electronic format that can be searched, sorted and analyzed.
One working day for financial investigation requests
Entities supervised by the Central Bank of Kuwait must establish internal procedures to ensure that requests from the Financial Investigations Department are treated as a priority and answered within one working day of receipt, unless the department sets another deadline based on the nature of the request or circumstances of the case.
Institutions must assign specialists or dedicated teams to handle the requests and give them the authority needed to obtain information, data and documents from the relevant departments.
Complete transaction data required
The authorities require financial institutions to submit all requested information and documents in a complete, accurate, clear and non-abbreviated form. The information must allow investigators to understand financial transactions, analyze them and track the movement of funds without having to request additional documents.
If any requested information or document cannot be provided, the institution must explain why and outline the steps taken to verify its availability. Account statements and transaction records must be submitted electronically in formats that are searchable, sortable and analyzable. Institutions cannot rely solely on images or files that cannot be processed electronically.
The data must be properly organized, with no more than one statement combined in a single column. Transaction records must include the date, time, direction, value, currency, purpose and type of each transaction.
The required transaction details cover local and international transfers, cheques, cash deposits and withdrawals, the creation or breaking of financing deposits, salary installment payments, commission profits, transfers between accounts, and securities purchases or sales.
Senior management to monitor compliance
The directive also requires institutions to appoint a primary and alternate point of contact from their anti-money laundering and terrorist financing departments to coordinate directly with the Financial Investigations Department and follow up on its requests.
Senior management must monitor compliance with the required speed and quality of responses and ensure that the necessary human and technical resources and internal procedures are in place to maintain implementation and continuity of the system.
