This month’s big release is the Simplified Verification Procedure feature, allowing issuers to simplify the verification process for eligible investors. We’ve also released refinements to our Xero integration feature, made it easier to identify expired verification documents, and many other improvements and bug fixes.
Simplified Verification Procedure (SVP)
Under AML/CTF rules, some investor types are considered low-risk and eligible for SVP, particularly exemptions from beneficial ownership checks. We have introduced features to enable SVP for Australian and foreign companies, trusts and government bodies:
- In the offer setup, the option to enable SVP for applicants who meet the SVP criteria has been added. Issuers may also request verification evidence from Government bodies.
- When SVP is enabled for an offer, companies, trusts and government bodies are asked additional questions in the application form to determine if they are an SVP. If so, they are not required to provide beneficial owner information.
- Questions to determine SVP status have been added to the contact create form and contact detail page.
- Holders which may qualify for SVP display an icon on the Holder details page.
- A new Government body holder type and Government body contact type have been introduced, with specific data fields for government bodies. Government bodies typically qualify for SVP.
Investor verification
- New columns and filtering have been added to the Client centre AML/CTF verification tables to more easily identify expired ID documents.
- An ‘Expired ID doc’ column has been added to the Individuals verification table. This column will display ‘Yes’ if any of a contact’s ID documents has an expiry date in the past.
- The ‘Accountant certificate expiry date’ column now has filtering for ‘All’ and ‘Expired’.
- The correct data is now supplied to GreenID to complete checks for New Zealand passports and driver’s licences.
- When a company ABN lookup fails due to no records being found, we now display a persistent validation message that the failure could be due to the company not having an ABN.
- In the ASIC ABN lookup, when a company is verified, we now display comparison information for the company name returned by ASIC and supplied by the applicant, the address returned by ASIC and supplied by the applicant, and the postal address returned by ASIC and supplied by the applicant.
- To comply with AML/CTF reforms, we no longer supply reasons why a GreenID verification for an individual has failed.
- If identification document information has been supplied without a file (eg Passport number), the document can’t be verified, but no action is required. Therefore, in the ‘Verified’ column of the contact details ‘Identity and other documents’ section, unverified documents will display ‘No’ instead of the warning icon.
Xero integration
- Added a new account mapping field - Unclaimed Monies Liability Account. This supports distributions that cannot be paid because investor bank details are unavailable.
- For payments synced with Xero, if a direct credit payment status is changed from Paid ABA to Retained in Registry Direct, eg. after an EFT has been rejected, the corresponding payment will be removed from the Xero bill.
- Fixed a layout bug in the Holders tab which caused the contact select to overlap a button.
- Fixed a bug which prevented journal entries being posted when capital call invoices were reconciled.
- Fixed a bug which caused manual journal entries to be posted to the wrong account when capital calls were processed.
Contacts
- Added new columns to the contact export for contact names for individuals. The export now contains columns for ‘Salutation’, ‘First name’, ‘Middle name’ and ‘Last name’, along with the column for the full name.
- Added new optional columns to the contact import spreadsheet: ‘Date of Birth’, ‘Middle name’, ‘TFN/Tax number’ and ‘Tax country’. If ‘TFN/Tax number’ and or ‘Tax country’ is supplied for a contact, a tax declaration will be created with these details.
- The ‘Back’ button on the contact details page will now take you back to your previous page rather than always to the contacts table.
- Fixed a bug in the Contact book ‘Date added’ column which caused the same date to be displayed for all contacts.
Offers and applications
- Improvements have been made to the ‘Applications requiring AML/CTF’ count to make it more accurate. This number is displayed in the Client centre All issuers summary table and the Issuer centre Offers list.
- A new ‘Complete’ state has been added to offers, which means the offer is closed and processing is completed. When the offer is Complete, remaining offer applications requiring AML/KYC are not included in the ‘Offers requiring AML/CTF’ count.
- Fixed a bug in the offer setup which resulted in an empty field for ‘Minimum investment amount’ being displayed when editing the offer, rather than the original saved value.
- Fixed a bug occurring on the application details page of applicants who are existing holders. The bug prevented the holder’s existing AML risk rating from loading into the application list verification column or the application detail page AML risk rating section.
- Fixed a bug for trust applicants with a foreign individual trustee, which occurred when the trustee's details were prefilled in the beneficial owner step. If the offer setup required two forms of ID for beneficial owners, the applicant was not prompted for it causing a validation error.
- Fixed a bug which occurred when issuing securities for an application, which prevented the verification statuses in some cases from being carried over to the issued application.
- Fixed a layout bug on the application form landing page in Expression of Interest state which occurred when no description was entered for the application.
- Validation has been added to the application form investment amount section ensuring only positive investment or share amounts can be entered.
- Fixed a bug which occurred when the offer setup was configured to request an accountant’s certificate from the primary contact, and caused an email to be sent requesting an accountant’s certificate to be supplied when it had already been supplied.
- Fixed a bug which occurred when fetching contacts from ASIC for an application, and merging a resulting duplicate contact. The merged contact was incorrectly displayed twice in the Contacts section of the application details.
Payments
- Fixed a bug which occurred when DRP payments were calculated before the payment date, but scheduled after the payment date, resulting in DRP transactions not being posted.
- Fixed a bug which occurred when changing a payment type from Accrual to Distribution, which prevented the ‘Total cash across all securities’ setting from being saved, instead switching to ‘Cash per security’.
Holders
- Extra information has been added to the Issue securities form to make it clear how to create and verify contacts and associated contacts without issuing securities to them.
- On the holder details page and the application details page, the holder details accordion, which lists the holder contacts, is now displayed with all nodes expanded by default.
Reports
- Fixed a bug in the Transactions report which caused trust names to not include the designation in the exported file.
- Fixed a bug in the QTFN report which caused some investors with valid ABNs to appear in the excluded QTFN list.
- Fixed a bug in the CRS report which prevented foreign beneficial owners of foreign entities who had no or incomplete tax declarations from being reported.
- Fixed a bug which occurred when an Australian tax-residency code was included in the CRS report for an investor who was also a tax resident in a reportable foreign jurisdiction, causing the CRS submission to be rejected.
- US tax residents are now excluded from the CRS report.
- Fixed a bug caused by the new specifications for the CRS report being introduced too early, resulting in failed lodgements. The new specifications will be implemented on 1 January 2027.
Communications
- The Outbox Ungrouped table can now be ordered by the last modified date as well as filtered by status. A new ‘Created’ column has been added, which shows the create date for the email and can be ordered.
- The email preview of branded emails now displays the current state of the email settings rather than the previously saved state. This allows you to preview emails before saving changes to settings.
Search
- Fixed a bug which caused search results to display holders for issuers under the client which the user did not have access to, causing a broken link.
Performance improvements
- Performance improvements have been made to the Holder details page.
- Performance improvements have been made to the transaction import template so that it is quicker and no longer times out when downloading for very large registers.
Securities
- Fixed a bug which prevented access to the Create securities page.
Investor centre
- Fixed a bug in the Holdings tab which prevented the option to add read-only users to all current and future holdings from working as expected.