Lukander Ruohola HTO Attorneys at Law was among the first to introduce DOKS at the start of 2019. The company has always taken the obligations of the Act on Preventing Money Laundering seriously, and the obligations have been well taken care of, but the practices have become even more polished with the service.
The company utilises DOKS to meet the obligations of the Act on Preventing Money Laundering on customer identification and the electronic signatures of agreements, among other things. According to the partner, attorney Juhani Ekuri, responsible for questions related to money laundering, the company takes care of all signatures for commissions in DOKS.
“Whenever we agree on a customer commission, the customer receives the data requests required by law in DOKS, where the customer completes an electronic identification. That is also when we obtain an electronic signature for the commission agreement,” Ekuri says.
The majority of the customers of the law firm represents Finnish SMEs for which DOKS works very well according to Ekuri, and there is no longer any need for manual work to attend to customer identification or to investigate beneficial owner information.
“DOKS has significantly reduced our workload, and it makes working with customers simpler. I believe that it also saves time for our customers.”
Furthermore, taking care of the obligations of the Act on Preventing Money Laundering is helped by the fact that in DOKS the documentation for customer identification is stored in one place where it can be easily checked. The automated sanctions list reviews and numerical risk assessment, which the company considers applying to its own risk assessments, bring added value.
Based on one year of using the system, Juhani Ekuri describes DOKS as a simple tool which ensures that the routines related to the obligations of the Act on Preventing Money Laundering are properly taken care of. He is also pleased that DOKS’ product development reacted quickly to feedback and has made desired changes to the service.
The Finnish Bar Association monitors the compliance with the Act on Money Laundering in the sector and trains and instructs its members on the matter.
