Question 1

Is AUSTRAC Tranche 2 actually mandatory for my agency?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Act 2024 brought every Australian real estate agency that brokers a sale under AUSTRAC's supervision from 1 July 2026. Property management and leasing are excluded; buyer's agents and auctioneers are not. The statute is not optional and the date is not negotiable. If your agency provides a designated service after commencement without an enrolled programme, you are operating outside the law from the first matter onward.

Question 2

What is the actual penalty for non-compliance?

Accepted Answer

Civil penalties reach $33 million per contravention for a body corporate and $6.6 million for an individual, pursued in the Federal Court. Criminal sanctions include imprisonment for the worst conduct. Every designated service you provide without a compliant programme is counted as a separate contravention — AUSTRAC pursued CBA for more than 53,000 contraventions ($700 million) and Westpac for over 23 million ($1.3 billion). Operating with no programme at all is the highest-risk position an agency can hold.

Question 3

Do I need to be the AML compliance officer myself?

Accepted Answer

AUSTRAC requires every reporting entity to appoint a fit-and-proper, Australian-resident compliance officer with management-level authority. Most principals appoint themselves — the role cannot be outsourced to a third party. Korvos makes it workable: AI drafts your programme, screens every customer, monitors transactions and prepares suspicious matter reports. You review and sign off on the small number of decisions Australian law requires a natural person to make. The role takes minutes per week, not hours.

Question 4

How long does setup actually take?

Accepted Answer

The platform — your agency-profile interview, drafted programme, four-factor risk assessment, identity verification wiring, sanctions and PEP screening, and audit trail — is ready for your principal to review by the end of your first afternoon. Governing-body approval of the programme is your decision; it is one of the irreducible moments Korvos cannot make for you. AMLCO appointment, AUSTRAC enrolment and staff training run as live workflows alongside, each with its own statutory timing. Korvos guides each one — it does not skip them.

Question 5

I already have a programme from a consultant. Do I still need Korvos?

Accepted Answer

A written programme is one of six AUSTRAC obligations. The other five — ongoing identity verification, sanctions and PEP screening, transaction monitoring, suspicious matter reporting and seven years of tamper-evident records — run every day after the programme is signed. A consultant gives you the document. Korvos gives you the document plus the live system that does the other five. You can import your existing programme on day one; nothing you have paid for is wasted.

Question 6

What about the free AUSTRAC starter kit?

Accepted Answer

The starter kit is templates. Templates help you understand what is required, but they are not a compliance system. They do not screen buyers against sanctions lists, identify politically exposed persons, monitor transactions or compose suspicious matter reports. AUSTRAC has stated publicly that it cares more about what an agency can demonstrate it is doing than what it has written down. Korvos is the system that does the work, every day, after the programme is sealed.

Question 7

How much does Korvos cost?

Accepted Answer

One plan. Korvos Compliance is $99/month with unlimited working seats within one ABN and the full AUSTRAC-ready stack. It's buyer-pays on customer checks: $25 per KYC bundle, with KYB entity checks ($45/$90/$145 by complexity) rolling out as CITEC entity verification goes live. Where buyer-pays is on, every dollar your buyers contribute credits 1:1 against your subscription, capped at the licence fee — so the platform pays for itself once a few checks per month flow through it. Cancel any time.

Question 8

Will your price go up?

Accepted Answer

Maybe — we adjust the list price for new sign-ups occasionally as the product matures. Your subscription price is locked at the rate you signed up at and will not increase for the lifetime of your continuous subscription. We don't run promotions, founding-member deals, or limited-time discounts. The price is the price. If you sign up today at $99/month and we raise the list price to $129 next year, you stay at $99 forever — for as long as you keep paying. Per-check fees ($25 KYC, $45/$90/$145 KYB) sit on the buyer-pays schedule and may change with 30 days' notice if third-party DVS or ASIC costs change — never your subscription rate.

Question 9

What if AUSTRAC audits me?

Accepted Answer

AUSTRAC can request your programme, risk assessment, customer due diligence records, sanctions screening logs and transaction monitoring history. Korvos exports a single audit bundle on demand — every artefact, every decision, every approval signature, sealed with cryptographic hashes that prove nothing has been altered. If a staff member tries to edit a record after the fact, the hash chain breaks and AUSTRAC will see it. Audit readiness is not a separate workflow; it is the default state of the system.

Question 10

Where does my agency and client data actually live?

Accepted Answer

Your data is stored and processed in Australia. Database, AI inference and document storage all run in Sydney (AWS ap-southeast-2), satisfying APP 8 data-residency expectations. Workflow orchestration runs overseas but only ever sees opaque UUIDs, never personal information. Every record is protected by a tamper-evident audit trail and isolated from other agencies at the database level via row-level security. We never log personal information to application logs.

Question 11

How is Korvos different from other AML platforms?

Accepted Answer

Most AML software is built for banks, accountants or law firms and bolted onto real estate as an afterthought — generic KYC fields, generic risk categories, no awareness of trust accounts or Form 6 disclosures. Korvos is built only for Australian real estate. It recognises the difference between a sales agency and a buyer's agency, integrates with your trust workflow and embeds compliance into the matter itself — so you do the work once and the compliance record writes itself. Standalone AML platforms charge $79 to $759 per month and live in a separate browser tab.

Oneplatform,
everyAMLobligation.

See Korvos in 30 seconds.

Your AUSTRAC programme, drafted in an afternoon.

Every buyer and seller, verified and screened.

A 7-year record that can’t be edited.

From exposure
to autopilot.

AUSTRAC is counting now.

How Korvos handles it.

Compliance is module one of the agency operating system.

Your buyers pay. You keep the credit.

Australia’s AML/CTF regime, explained for real estate.

What is AUSTRAC Tranche 2?

Scope, entity structure, edge cases

The six things AUSTRAC requires

PEP screening, ECDD, training

SMRs, TTRs, reliance, review

What AUSTRAC can do to you

What principals ask first.

The obligations are live.
Prove you’re meeting them.

Oneplatform,everyAMLobligation.

See Korvos in 30 seconds.

Your AUSTRAC programme, drafted in an afternoon.

Every buyer and seller, verified and screened.

A 7-year record that can’t be edited.

From exposureto autopilot.

AUSTRAC is counting now.

How Korvos handles it.

Compliance is module one of the agency operating system.

Your buyers pay. You keep the credit.

Australia’s AML/CTF regime, explained for real estate.

What is AUSTRAC Tranche 2?

Scope, entity structure, edge cases

The six things AUSTRAC requires

PEP screening, ECDD, training

SMRs, TTRs, reliance, review

What AUSTRAC can do to you

What principals ask first.

Is AUSTRAC Tranche 2 actually mandatory for my agency?+

What is the actual penalty for non-compliance?+

Do I need to be the AML compliance officer myself?+

How long does setup actually take?+

I already have a programme from a consultant. Do I still need Korvos?+

What about the free AUSTRAC starter kit?+

How much does Korvos cost?+

Will your price go up?+

What if AUSTRAC audits me?+

Where does my agency and client data actually live?+

How is Korvos different from other AML platforms?+

The obligations are live.Prove you’re meeting them.

Oneplatform,
everyAMLobligation.

From exposure
to autopilot.

The obligations are live.
Prove you’re meeting them.