Today we're releasing Identity verification 2.0 — the biggest update to our identity verification product since we launched it in 2022. This release introduces a new dashboard, a new billing structure, standalone AML & CTF screening, and a set of feature improvements many of you have been asking for.

This is a long post, but if you use identity verification in Annature, it's worth reading the whole thing — there's important information in every section.

Before I get into the detail, two important things to know up front:

If you're not a reporting entity under Tranche 2 obligations, most of what's changed doesn't apply to you. You get a new interface, some new features, and a cleaner billing line — but the way you send verifications and the way they work is mostly unchanged.

The pricing hasn’t gone up. The billing structure has changed to reflect the new product, but the total cost of a full verification with AML & CTF screening is the same as it was before. More detail below.

Walk through these changes live

I’m running two webinars next week covering everything in this post and the rest of the AML & CTF module. Same content each session — pick whichever works for you:

• Wednesday 8 July, 11:00am AEST — Register here

• Thursday 9 July, 2:00pm AEST — Register here

If you can't make either session, register for the recording — here — and we'll send it out once the live sessions have wrapped up.

Billing changes

Currently when you're subscribed to Identity verification, your invoices show two line items — Standard verifications and Enhanced verifications. Enhanced was everything included in Standard, plus the AML & CTF screening check.

Your next invoice will instead show:

• Identity verifications — the equivalent of what was Standard

• AML & CTF screening — the equivalent of what was previously bundled into Enhanced

So if you were previously sending 10 Enhanced verifications, your invoice would have shown Standard verifications: 0 and Enhanced verification: 10. Going forward, that same 10 verifications will show as Identity verifications: 10 and AML & CTF screening checks: 10.

The prices for these line items have adjusted proportionally — you are not being charged more. The total cost is identical to what you were paying before. We've simply separated the two components so they can be billed independently, which matters because...

AML & CTF screening now runs independently. Previously, AML & CTF screening was only available bundled with a verification. Now you can run standalone AML & CTF screening checks without doing a full identity verification, which is the right approach for many reporting entity workflows — particularly bulk-screening your existing client base. More on this further down.

Identity verification 2.0

Identity verification 2.0 launches today as a BETA. You'll see a new menu item in your navigation bar that takes you into it.

Right now, the old product and 2.0 are separate. Verifications you send from the old product won't appear in 2.0, and vice versa. This is deliberate for the transition period — data from each is kept isolated until the migration.

On 13 July, all data from the old product will be migrated into 2.0. From that point, the old product closes, and everything lives in 2.0.

Any verifications still in progress on 13 July will be cancelled during the migration and will appear as cancelled in 2.0. To avoid this, we recommend sending all new verifications from 2.0 during this interim period.

We strongly recommend you start sending all new verifications through 2.0 from today. This gives your in-progress verifications from the old product a week and a half to be completed before the 13 July migration.

Our data shows verifications are typically completed within 1-2 business days, so a week and a half is plenty of time for anything already in flight to finish before it’s affected.

What's new in 2.0

We've used this opportunity to ship a set of improvements many of you have requested.

SMS with verification link. Previously, mobile numbers on a verification were only used for two-factor authentication, which meant the customer had to start from their email. When you enter a mobile number now, the default is to send an SMS containing the verification link — the same behaviour you get with envelopes. The customer can start from the SMS directly. If you'd rather use the mobile number for OTP as before, that option is still available.

Two-factor authentication on verifications served limited purpose anyway — a verification request is an empty form, not a document containing information that needs protecting. The link-first approach reflects how customers actually complete these requests, which is from their mobile phone.

Biometrics and AML & CTF screening are now on by default. The majority of our customers using the identity verification product are reporting entities, which means biometrics and AML & CTF screening are the sensible defaults. You now need to opt out of these if they don't apply to your use case.

Email and SMS customisation. You can now personalise the email and SMS messages sent when you create a verification, in the same way you customise messages when sending an envelope. Add a note, a personal introduction, or context specific to your client — helpful for reducing the "is this legitimate?" hesitation some recipients have with automated verification requests.

Availability (formerly Sharing). We've made a small change to how verifications are shared across organisations and groups. Sharing is now called Availability. If your organisation uses groups, the way verifications are sent from the organisation level versus from a specific group has been refined. The change is small but worth being aware of.

New required fields

Two new required fields for all verifications sent from 2.0:

• Country of birth

• Nationality or citizenship

Along with the existing required fields (full name, date of birth, address), these help sharpen AML & CTF screening results. When a screening check returns potential matches, the additional data narrows the results and helps build a more complete KYC profile of the customer.

If you're using Annature purely for identity verification without AML & CTF screening, these fields are still captured — the data doesn't cost you anything to collect and it's useful information to have on file.

Reviewing AML & CTF screening matches

When an AML & CTF screening check returns results, you'll be shown the list of potential matches — individuals who share attributes (name, date of birth, country of origin, etc.) with the person you're screening. You can review each match individually and use your professional judgement to determine whether the match refers to the person you're actually engaging with.

An important thing to remember: AML & CTF screening checks often return matches by their nature. This is essentially the automated equivalent of an internet search — reviewing results to see which, if any, refer to the person you're actually working with — which AUSTRAC's own guidance endorses as a valid method for background and PEP checks.

There will be results. Your job is to use the information you've collected about the customer against the information shown in the match to make an assessment. In the vast majority of cases, potential matches will be false positives — the tool has done its job by surfacing them; you do yours by clearing them.

Standalone AML & CTF screening

We'll be covering this in more depth during our webinars next week, but the headline is:

For existing clients, you generally don't need to run a full identity verification. Reporting entities are expected to take a risk-based approach to CDD for existing clients. In most cases, this means running standalone AML & CTF screening to establish a baseline for each client and enrol them in ongoing monitoring — without needing to redo full identity verification for clients you've worked with for years.

Standalone AML & CTF screening is now available as its own tab in 2.0. You'll also see all screening checks run as part of a full verification appearing in this same view, so you have a single place to review all your AML & CTF screening activity.

Ongoing monitoring — free of charge

One thing worth calling out: ongoing monitoring at Annature is free.

We've watched the industry over the last twelve months, with new AML compliance apps appearing regularly, most of them charging per client per month for ongoing monitoring. It's ridiculous pricing that adds significant recurring cost for a service that should just be part of doing the job properly.

When you run an AML & CTF screening check at Annature, ongoing monitoring is enabled by default and it is free for the next 10 years. We'd say forever, but forever is a long time.

The next module of our AML/CTF tooling is now live. You can generate a tailored ML/TF risk assessment for your firm — the diagnostic document that sits alongside your AML/CTF Program and describes the money laundering and terrorism financing risks your firm is exposed to.

Generating a risk assessment in Annature takes a handful of short questions about your firm — your client base, your geographic exposure, how you typically engage with clients. From there, the document is produced and stored against your program, with the same review cadence prompts and audit trail as your other AML documents.

I've recorded a short walkthrough showing how to generate your risk assessment, what the document looks like, and how to make changes if your judgement differs from what Annature produces. Have a watch below.

Coming up next: a major update to our Identity verification product. New dashboard, a redesigned verification request flow, and bulk enrolment of established clients into ongoing AML monitoring — including how this connects with your practice management systems like Xero Practice Manager, FYI Elite and Kloud Connect.

As always, if you have feedback or questions, hit the chat button in the bottom-right of the app.

— Corey

The first module of our AML/CTF tooling is now live. You can generate a tailored AML/CTF Program for your firm, along with the two supporting procedure documents that sit alongside it — your Risk assessment procedure and your Identity verification and AML screening procedure. If you'd rather use program documents you've prepared elsewhere, you can upload those instead.

Alongside the documents, you'll find the participant training workflow. Add your staff, send them the program for review, and Annature records each acknowledgement against their record. Your dashboard gives you a live view of training status across the firm, and the system prompts staff when refresher training is due or when a material change requires re-acknowledgement.

Built-in review cadences keep the program itself on schedule. When your AML/CTF Program is due for review, the Compliance Officer is prompted — and every action, version change, and acknowledgement is captured in the audit log.

I've recorded a short walkthrough showing how to generate your program documents, configure training, and use the dashboard. Have a watch below.

This is the first module in our AML/CTF release. Coming up next: building your firm's ML/TF Risk Assessment — the diagnostic document that complements your AML/CTF Program and sets out your firm's specific money laundering and terrorism financing risk profile.

As always, if you have feedback or questions, hit the chat button in the bottom-right of the app.

— Corey

Word document to PDF conversion is back up and working normally.

The Microsoft Word Online service is still down, however we’ve implemented a backup conversion service in the interim which is currently handling 100% of conversions. You should experience no further disruption while we wait for Microsoft to restore their service.

We'll monitor Word document conversions throughout the rest of the day, and may even consider making this new backup conversion service our primary if we observe better stability.

We're currently experiencing an issue with our Word document to PDF conversion feature due to an outage with the Microsoft Word Online Business service — which is the third-party service we rely on for this functionality.

What this means for you: If you attempt to upload a Word document to Annature, it will not convert to PDF at this time and may appear to be “stuck” uploading.

What you can do in the meantime: Please convert your Word documents to PDF before uploading to Annature. You can do this via File > Save As > PDF in Microsoft Word.

We're treating a permanent backup solution as a top priority and will have one in place shortly.

We apologise for the inconvenience this causes.

Since Sunday we observed a few small pockets of conversion errors lasting around 5 minutes at a time, which we attributed to intermittent hiccups with Microsoft’s service. As of this morning however, the service has been permanently offline rather than recovering on its own.

On a personal note - Microsoft’s Word conversion is genuinely the only service I’ve found that handles Word to PDF fidelity correctly. Every other solution we’ve evaluated has issues with fonts, images, or formatting. So while I acknowledge not having a backup in place for this service is a problem, it’s less “we didn’t think of it” and more “the backup options aren’t actually good enough”. We’re actively working to change that now. — Corey

You may have noticed we’ve been quiet about Tranche 2.

That’s been deliberate.

Over the last 18 months, the market has been flooded with webinars, white papers, consultancies, and new platforms - all working hard to educate accountants and other Tranche 2 entities about what the AML/CTF reforms mean. A lot of people are doing that job well, and we didn’t want to add to the noise when others were better placed to lead the conversation.

Now that the market is informed and 1 July 2026 is approaching, it’s time for us to share what we’ve been doing - from a product perspective - to support you.

If you’re still unsure about your obligations - what designated services trigger the regime, how to enrol with AUSTRAC, what a compliant program looks like - please reach out. We’re happy to point you to the people and resources who’ve done an excellent job at educating the sector. This update isn’t that. This update is about what we’re building.

AML isn’t new to Annature

Annature has offered AML capability as an add-on to our Identity verification product since we first launched back in 2022. It’s been used by financial services firms and law firms (which have been regulated entities for some time). If you’re currently using Identity verification, you’ve probably never seen the AML features - because you didn’t need them. We keep the interface simple and only surface what’s relevant to you.

That's about to change. Tranche 2 brings accountants and other newly-regulated sectors into the regime from 1 July, and we're making our AML module a core part of the platform.

What’s changing on 1 July

If you're an existing Annature Identity verification customer, this section is for you. Tranche 2 is changing how we deliver AML capability inside the product you already use - and we want to be upfront about what that means.

The client-facing experience doesn't change. Your clients will continue to receive verification requests and complete them exactly as they do today. Nothing changes for them.

What changes is what happens behind the verification.

Today, when sending a verification request, you can turn on "Enhanced verification" to trigger AML/CTF checks. Your client's collected information is securely passed to a trusted third-party provider who runs sanctions, PEP, terrorism financing, and adverse media checks - giving you a full picture of any flags against that individual across global watchlists.

From 1 July 2026, two things change:

• AML/CTF checks are on by default. Today they're opt-in. From 1 July, they're opt-out. If you're providing a designated service, the checks happen automatically - no toggle to remember, no client falling through the cracks because someone forgot to tick a box. When you know AML/CTF checks aren't required (verifying someone for a non-designated service, for example), you can still opt out per verification. The toggle just flips: on by default, off when you say so.

• Ongoing monitoring is on by default for verified customers. Today, monitoring a client against sanctions and PEP lists after they've been verified is a separate consideration. From 1 July, every verified customer is automatically enrolled in ongoing monitoring. If a client becomes a PEP or appears on a sanctions list weeks or months after onboarding, you'll be notified. This is one of the most overlooked obligations under Tranche 2 - and now it's handled for you, automatically.

The new AML modules we’re building

Identity verification is only one part of your AML/CTF obligations under Tranche 2. To support the rest, we're building a set of new modules that together cover what a compliant program actually requires — from generating the program itself to managing staff training, customer risk assessments, and senior manager approvals.

By 1 July 2026, your Annature dashboard will include:

• AML/CTF Program generation. A guided tool that produces your AML/CTF Program document, tailored to your practice. We've designed the questionnaire to take about two minutes - not the 40-question wizards you'll find elsewhere. Our position is that a good program covers your practice broadly, with light customisation where it genuinely matters.

• ML/TF Risk Assessment. A separate risk assessment document, generated through a more detailed questionnaire, that reflects your firm's actual risk profile across services, customers, geography, and delivery channels.

• Operational procedure documents. Two procedure documents that explain exactly how your firm conducts customer risk assessment and identity verification - built around how Annature actually works. These are the documents your staff use day-to-day.

• Compliance Officer dashboard. A single view for your AML/CTF Compliance Officer showing customer risk ratings, pending approvals, training status, and upcoming reviews.

  

• Staff training module. Send your AML documents to your team for review and acknowledgement. The platform tracks who has reviewed what, when, and prompts for refresher training on the cadence you set. Full audit log included.

• Document version control and review cycles. The platform reminds your Compliance Officer when your program and risk assessment are due for review, captures changes, and maintains a complete history.

• Customer risk assessments. Rather than sending clients a 40-question form, our approach is to capture risk assessment information from the conversations you're already having at onboarding - via meeting transcripts powered by Vinyl, or through your existing tools like Content Snare. The AI generates a draft risk assessment and risk-rating, your Compliance Officer reviews and approves it.

• Identity verification - already in Annature, now extended. Our existing ID verification product continues to handle KYC, with ongoing sanctions and PEP screening. Now it's connected to the broader AML workflow - verifications feed into customer risk ratings automatically.

• Ongoing monitoring bulk enrolment for existing client bases. For firms with established client lists, we're providing bulk-enrolment tools via our integrations with the practice management systems you already use - Xero Practice Manager, FYI Docs, Kloud Connect, and others. You'll be able to enrol your entire client base into ongoing monitoring in a single workflow, rather than re-verifying each client individually.

• Senior manager approvals register. When a customer is rated high-risk or identified as a PEP, the platform routes the decision to your senior manager with full audit trail. No more spreadsheets, no more email chains.

A few things we’ve deliberately not built

We’ve made some intentional choices about what doesn’t belong in Annature.

We’re not hosting your Suspicious Matter Report register. SMR data is highly sensitive, and AUSTRAC expects it to be tightly controlled within your firm. We'll provide a downloadable register template so you can maintain this properly, but the data stays with you, where it belongs.

We're not building Threshold Transaction Report workflows. For the customers we serve, $10,000+ cash payments are rare - and where they do occur, you can lodge directly with AUSTRAC.

We're not building a questionnaire form builder. There are excellent tools that already do this (Content Snare, Onboardme, and others). We'll integrate with what you already use rather than reinvent it.

What happens next

Everything described above will be available in your Annature dashboard before 1 July 2026. We'll be in touch closer to launch with access details and onboarding support.

In the meantime, if you have questions - about Tranche 2 generally, or about how Annature fits into your compliance approach - just send us a message. We're happy to talk.

Thanks for your patience while we built something we're genuinely proud of.

— Corey

We’ve just shipped the first version of Analytics - a new way to see how your organisation is using Annature.

You can now report on envelopes and text messages sent over any period, and filter by account, group and status to drill into what’s complete, what’s still in progress, and how things have tracked over time. It’s the same data you've always had, finally in one place where you can actually look at it.

What you can do with it

Filter by account or group to see how individual teams or senders are tracking. Filter by status to separate completed envelopes from those still in progress. Compare periods to spot trends — busier months, quieter weeks, where text message usage is climbing.

Analytics is available to administrators. Look for the new Analytics menu item in the side navigation.

What’s next

This is our first cut, and we’ve got more planned. We were very excited to get this into the hands of our customers and start collecting feedback as soon as possible.

It's also a great way for us to stress-test the system. Analytics work with such large datasets that we can only do so much testing ourselves — it's never quite the same as real-world usage.

Coming up next, we want to dive into how your recipients interact with envelopes — things like a breakdown of signing sessions between email and SMS, and the average time it takes for a recipient to open an envelope from when it was first sent.

Exportable reports is the other big one we're working on: the ability to generate a report with a set of filters, save those filters, and then re-generate the report at any time with a single click and download it as a CSV.

If there's a view you'd love to see, let us know.

Annature Payments is officially live. If you haven't already, head to the Payments section in the left-hand navigation to complete your registration and get started.

Xero users: reconnection required

If you have the Xero integration connected, you'll need to reconnect it before you can take full advantage of Annature Payments. This is because Payments requires additional permissions from your Xero account — specifically to read your invoices and mark them as paid once payment is collected.

To reconnect, go to Settings > Integrations and click Reconnect next to Xero. The process takes less than a minute. For more detail on what we're asking access to and why, see our Xero permissions and Reconnecting to Xero help articles.

Even if you don't plan to use Annature Payments right now, you'll still need to reconnect. We maintain a single version of the Xero integration across all accounts, so this is required regardless. You'll see an orange notification banner in your dashboard prompting you to do this.

Join us for a live walkthrough

We're running two webinars to walk you through everything Annature Payments can do. We'll be joined by Cameron from Pinch, our payments gateway partner, who'll be on hand to answer any questions about how payments are processed.

• Tomorrow — Register here at 1:00pm AEST

• Next Tuesday — Register here at 11:00am AEST

We'd love to see you there. And if you can't make it, register anyway — we'll send you a recording afterwards.

— Corey