Preparing the annual AML questionnaire for lawyers

In short

• The bars are setting up an online platform to which every Belgian lawyer will be connected. A voluntary and anonymous phase is planned, probably from November 2026 to March 2027, then a mandatory questionnaire every year from 2027.
• The questions are not public on 7 October 2026. They will check how the practice applies the Law of 18 September 2017.
• The firm can prepare now: the inventory of covered activities, the overall risk assessment, the written procedures, the roles, training, due diligence and record keeping.
• Controls already exist: the bâtonnier is the lawyers' supervisor, and at the OVB each stafhouder checks at least 2.5 % of the members of the bar each year.

The annual questionnaire readiness checklist goes through these obligations one by one, with their article, and produces a report of what remains to do.

What the bars announced

In an editorial published on Lexgo on 10 September 2026, the president of AVOCATS.BE and a board member explain the decision of both community Ordres and every bar. Two reasons lie behind it. The FATF mutual evaluation of Belgium, published in December 2025, asks for more frequent and more on-site controls in higher-risk sectors, regular follow-up and a standardised preparation of controls; the bars will present their measures to the FATF in April 2028. The new European package also provides that an independent public authority oversees the bars themselves as self-regulatory bodies (Directive 2024/1640, art. 52).

The platform draws on the Luxembourg model. The first phase, voluntary and anonymous, asks successive questions to decide, matter by matter, whether it is within the scope of the law and which risk points to watch: a practical aid for risk analysis. The second is a mandatory control platform: once a year from 2027, every Belgian lawyer answers questions that check and evaluate the practice. In the medium term, each lawyer will also carry out a yearly risk analysis there.

What is not known yet

On 7 October 2026, several elements are not public: the platform's name and provider, its regulatory basis (no new regulation was found in the AVOCATS.BE Code of 30 April 2026 or in the OVB Codex updated to 9 December 2025), the exact dates and deadline, the list of questions, whether answers are given per lawyer or per firm, and what follows a failure to answer. It is also unknown whether the questionnaire will replace those the stafhouders already send.

In Luxembourg, whose model is followed, two online questionnaires are mandatory: one on the professional infrastructure and a yearly one, in a "lawyer" version and a "firm" version. Nothing guarantees that Belgium will follow that split.

The obligations the questionnaire will check

Whatever form the questions take, they will concern the obligations of the law and the bar regulations:

• Scope: which of the firm's activities fall under art. 5 §1 28°, and whether each new file receives a scope check.
• The overall risk assessment (arts. 16 and 17): written, dated, kept up to date, covering clients, services and transactions, countries and channels, with the factors of Annexes I to III.
• Policies and procedures (art. 8): client acceptance, due diligence, reporting, record keeping and internal control, signed off by a senior-level member and checked.
• Roles (arts. 9 and 10): the person responsible at the highest level, the AMLCO and the internal whistleblowing channel. For a report, the AMLCO is the lawyer in charge of the file (Constitutional Court 114/2020, B.21).
• Training (arts. 8 and 11) of staff, and the lawyers' training points.
• Due diligence: the individual assessment (art. 19), identification and verification (arts. 21 to 31), beneficial owners and the UBO register (arts. 23 and 29), PEPs and financial sanctions (arts. 8 and 41), enhanced due diligence (arts. 38 and 39) and ongoing monitoring (art. 35).
• Atypical transactions and reporting: the written analysis (art. 45), reporting to the bâtonnier (art. 52) and the tipping-off ban (art. 55).
• Record keeping for ten years (arts. 60 to 63) and cash: no payment above €3,000 (art. 67).

The controls that already exist

The bâtonnier of the Ordre is the lawyers' AML supervisor (art. 85 §1 11°), with a risk-based approach (art. 87). At the OVB, the Codex organises preventive questionnaires and controls: each stafhouder checks at least 2.5 % of the members of the bar every year, and an AML control unit acts at the stafhouder's request (art. 72). The Antwerp bar thus questions about 90 to 100 lawyers each spring. At AVOCATS.BE, an AML commission documents, trains the bâtonniers and the local units, and publishes templates (Code art. 4.89).

A general yearly questionnaire changes the scale: every lawyer answers, every year. The documents asked for in a control are those the law already requires; it is better to have them ready than to write them when answering.

Preparing the firm in four steps

1. Take stock. List the practice areas and mark those with transactions of point 28°. Plan a scope check when each file is opened.
2. Draw up the overall risk assessment. The firm-wide assessment tool builds the document from your answers, with its method, the risks per category, the controls in place, the action plan and the review date.
3. Write the procedures. Client acceptance, identification, beneficial owners, PEPs and sanctions, enhanced due diligence, analysis of atypical transactions, the reporting route and record keeping. Have them signed off and dated.
4. Apply the method to every client. An individual assessment and a dated note for each matter within scope; the client risk assessment produces them without the data leaving your device.

AML training for lawyers

Both regimes now require AML points. At AVOCATS.BE, at least 2 points over the current reference period, from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2028, encoded in LGO (Code art. 3.27 §1). At the OVB, at least 1 point per judicial year, from 1 September to 31 August, since 2 October 2025 (Codex art. 53). Staff whose role requires it are trained too, with continuing training programmes (art. 11 of the law).

Sources

• AVOCATS.BE, editorial on Lexgo (10/09/2026)
• Law of 18 September 2017, consolidated text
• AVOCATS.BE: Code of conduct (version of 30/04/2026)
• AVOCATS.BE: continuing education
• OVB: Codex Deontologie voor Advocaten
• OVB: AML procedure handbook
• Antwerp bar: AML
• Constitutional Court, judgment 114/2020