What is a DNFBP? AUSTRAC's designated non-financial businesses and professions explained

What is a DNFBP? AUSTRAC's designated non-financial businesses and professions explained

If you've been reading about Australia's Tranche 2 AML/CTF reforms, you've probably run into the term DNFBP. It sounds like public service alphabet soup, but it's useful shorthand once you know what it's pointing at, and why AUSTRAC itself doesn't use the label.

What does DNFBP mean?

DNFBP stands for designated non-financial business or profession. It's a term the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global body that sets anti-money laundering standards, coined to describe businesses outside banking and finance that still handle large transactions, move assets, or help set up legal structures, which makes them attractive to criminals trying to hide the source of money. Lawyers, accountants, real estate agents and precious metals dealers are the classic examples.

AUSTRAC doesn't call them DNFBPs

Search AUSTRAC's site for "DNFBP" and you won't find much beyond old parliamentary submissions. Instead, AUSTRAC organises Australia's newly regulated businesses by the designated services they provide, across four groups:

• Real estate services

• Precious metals, stones and products services

• Virtual asset services

• Professional services

DNFBP is still the term the rest of the industry, consultants, software vendors, journalists, uses to talk about this group collectively, because it's the internationally recognised FATF label. Just don't expect to find it in AUSTRAC's own guidance.

The four sectors AUSTRAC newly regulated

Real estate services

Agents, brokers and others who help arrange the sale, purchase or transfer of real estate. Personr has a dedicated guide to AML compliance for real estate agents.

Precious metals, stones and products (DPMSP)

Dealers who buy or sell precious metals, stones, or products made from them (think jewellery, not just loose stones or bullion, which AUSTRAC regulates as a separate service), where a single sale or purchase, or linked transactions, is worth $10,000 or more in cash or virtual assets. Sell a customer a diamond ring for $9,000 cash and you're outside the threshold. Sell the same customer a ring and a bracelet in the same transaction for a combined $11,000, and you're in.

Virtual asset services

Businesses providing services involving cryptocurrency and other virtual assets, beyond the digital currency exchange services AUSTRAC already regulated before Tranche 2.

Professional services

Lawyers, accountants, conveyancers, insolvency practitioners and financial advisers, when they provide certain services set out in table 6 of the AML/CTF Act. That includes helping plan or execute the sale, purchase or transfer of real estate or a company or trust, holding or managing a client's money or property, and arranging equity or debt financing.

This last category is where most of what people call trust and company service providers, or TCSPs, sits. AUSTRAC doesn't treat TCSPs as their own separate sector the way older FATF-style lists do. If you're forming companies, acting as a nominee director, or providing a registered office address as part of your business, you're most likely caught here, under professional services, not a standalone TCSP category. Lawyers and accountants offering these services fall into the same bucket, we've written more on what Tranche 2 means for lawyers specifically.

What about casinos?

FATF's classic DNFBP list includes casinos too. In Australia, casinos and other gambling services have been AML/CTF regulated since the Act first came into force in 2006. They're not part of what's new under Tranche 2, they were already in.

Why the distinction matters

If your business fits into one of the four groups above, and you're providing the specific designated service AUSTRAC describes, not just working in that industry generally, you've had AML/CTF obligations since 1 July 2026, when Tranche 2 came into effect. Whether you call yourself a DNFBP or a newly regulated entity doesn't change what you owe AUSTRAC. What changes the outcome is understanding exactly which of your services trigger the obligation, since it's often only part of what a business does, not the whole thing.

AUSTRAC has published sector-specific program starter kits to help eligible small businesses in each of these groups build their first AML/CTF program, including one built specifically for jewellers. If your business is more complex than a typical small operator, or you're not sure which designated services actually apply to you, that's the point to bring in dedicated compliance support rather than guess.