By Our Correspondent
National News – The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has extended the deadline for banks and financial institutions to fully implement its new automated anti-money laundering (AML) compliance standards.
Under the revised timeline announced on March 10, 2026, deposit money banks now have 18 months to comply with the regulations, while other financial institutions have 24 months to meet the requirements.
The extension gives financial institutions more time to deploy advanced technology systems designed to detect and prevent financial crimes, including money laundering and terrorism financing.
The new compliance framework forms part of the CBN’s strategy to strengthen Nigeria’s financial system and align regulatory practices with global standards.
The guidelines require banks, mobile money operators, international money transfer operators, payment service providers, and other regulated institutions to deploy automated anti-money laundering solutions capable of monitoring transactions and identifying suspicious activities in real time.
Financial institutions must also submit detailed implementation roadmaps to the CBN’s Compliance Department within three months, outlining how they plan to meet the new requirements.
According to the apex bank, the move is necessary as Nigeria’s financial ecosystem becomes increasingly digital and complex.
Traditional manual monitoring systems are no longer sufficient to track large volumes of electronic transactions or detect sophisticated financial crimes.
Automated AML systems will enable institutions to conduct risk-based customer due diligence, strengthen know-your-customer (KYC) processes, and improve the detection and reporting of suspicious transactions to regulators and intelligence agencies.
The standards are aligned with global recommendations from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
The framework also introduces strict operational requirements, including sanctions screening, politically exposed persons monitoring, unified customer risk profiling, transaction monitoring, case management, audit trails, and enhanced data security controls.
The CBN further encourages financial institutions to adopt emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve fraud detection and financial crime risk management.
However, these technologies must undergo annual independent validation, accuracy checks, fairness audits, and bias testing to ensure reliability.
Institutions that fail to comply with the new AML standards risk facing regulatory sanctions, administrative penalties, and other enforcement measures under the Banks and Other Financial Institutions Act and the Central Bank of Nigeria Act.
