Peacock Visual Arts & the New Anti-Money Laundering Directive
Introduction
Peacock Visual Arts is a printmaking workshop established in 1974 and supported by Aberdeen City Council & Creative Scotland. Located in the northeast of Scotland, Peacock Visual Arts has been an Own Art member since 2013, offering a wide range of artistic techniques, such as relief printing, intaglio, screenprint and lithography through the Own Art scheme. In March 2021, Peacock attended Creative United’s AMLD5 & the Art Market training sessions, designed in partnership with London law firm, Kingsley Napley LLP to support the art market in reaction to HMRC’s time-sensitive new anti-money laundering directive.
Creative United’s Learnworlds platform delivered the education, confidence and tools necessary for galleries like Peacock to understand their responsibilities as ‘Art Market Participants’, as well as how to comply with the new legislation in time for the looming 10 June 2021 deadline.
The Story of Peacock Visual Arts & AMLD5
In January 2020, the UK Government passed new anti-money laundering regulations (known as ‘AMLD5’). The new regulations have been extended from those previously in force and now cover business activity taking place within the art market.
The new compliance requirements apply to ‘Art Market Participants’ (AMPs) – which include galleries, dealers and auction houses involved in selling work directly to clients that handle single or linked transactions for the sale of goods in excess of €10,000 (c.£8.5k).
As a sector support organisation invested in the visual arts sector, Own Art saw an opportunity to ensure their network of over 320 gallery members were supported and confident in understanding, assessing and responding to the new regulations.
The Opportunity of AMLD5 and the Art Market
When news of the new anti-money laundering directive hit the art market, it was concerning how little those who it would affect knew about it. In the words of AML Founder, Susan J Mumford “This is going to incur a seismic shift for the art market and the way it does business”.
Own Art predicted that the vast majority of member galleries on the network have artworks on sale that meet or exceed the £8.5k compliance price point and therefore saw it as our responsibility to communicate the directive and the training programme to our network ahead of the upcoming HMRC deadline.
Peacock received communications promoting Creative United’s AMLD5 & the Art Market training programme from Creative Scotland, who are funders of Peacock and partners of the AMLD5 programme. Having had no prior knowledge of the directive and the potential consequences of not complying, Peacock saw this as something that needed to be addressed and a vital training opportunity to stay compliant in all future transactions.
Why Peacock Chose to Attend AMLD5 & the Art Market Sessions
Creative United’s AMLD5 & the Art Market training programme is a free service that was delivered to support our networks and encourage HMRC registrations and compliance. Failure to comply may be a criminal offence and result in financial penalties. This includes failure to conduct adequate:
- customer due diligence
- risk assessments
- policies, controls and procedures
- record keeping
All of which are addressed in the free training sessions. Peacock chose to attend all of the training sessions that were delivered to learn about AMLD5 and to ensure that their organisation was compliant.
The Results
In Creative United’s pre and post-session surveys, we saw that confidence around the new directive increased dramatically after attending the sessions.
Peacock Visual Arts are now prepared to put this training into practice whenever the situation may arise, as well as for future training of staff members. These sessions provide useful and relevant information to make galleries more aware of conducting due diligence in general.
Peacock has said that they recommend AMLD5 & the Art Market Training Sessions to fellow Own Art gallery members as they found them extremely useful. As the hour-long webinar sessions covered a lot of information, signing up and accessing the Learnworlds platform is advantageous as you can view them again at your leisure and encourages gallery staff to stay educated in their responsibilities too.
“The [AMLD5] toolkit is helpful to have as a refresher or to look up any queries.”
Peacock Visual Arts
How Creative United and Own Art Responded
Creative United, in partnership with London law firm, Kingsley Napley LLP, has developed an AMLD5 toolkit on their Learnworlds platform for Art Market Participants to access for free at their leisure.
Own Art has partnered with ArtAML to deliver our network of over 320 member galleries exclusive discounts for their service. ArtAML provides a simple and full-circle solution for the art market in order to comply with the new anti-money laundering regulations.
Own Art member galleries have been gifted 14 months for the price of 12 when they sign up to ArtAML’s platform. They can do all the hard work keeping you complying so you can carry on with business.