Since mid-2023, tax consultancy Pereira Consultants has been using Grub. By using Grub, the organization aims to ensure that all of its clients are compliant with the AML. Nuno Ribeiro, compliance officer at Pereira, oversees the whole thing. He talks about Pereira Consultants and its partnership with ComplianceWise.
About Pereira Tax Consultants
Pereira Consultants provides high-quality, creative and pragmatic customized solutions to clients, nationally and internationally. Pereira is an independent tax consulting firm that is driven by client needs. The organization uses an individual approach with personal guidance and combines this with deep and broad tax knowledge. Pereira helps both corporations and individuals for many different issues.
Become a Grub'er
The organization works with Grub to check that clients are compliant with the AML. Nuno: “Grub is a flawless system. Information about the customer is retrieved directly from the Chamber of Commerce (CoC). You get all the information you need and immediately have a picture of the organization’s organization chart. Sometimes you need to supplement the information with additional information about the owner or person with beneficial ownership (UBO), but you can easily find out that information.”
For Pereira’s international clients, the process is different. Nuno: “This is because you can’t get information about foreign organizations from the Chamber of Commerce. That’s why we work with a workaround. We add the necessary information and persons in Grub ourselves. Again, Grub does help us assess compliance risks, only we have to work slightly differently.”
'The Netherlands is the best boy in the class'
Pereira collects the information from foreign data by requesting it directly from the customer. That usually doesn’t cause any problems either. “They always cooperate, because they want to use our consulting services,” he says. But that’s not the only reason clients cooperate willingly, Nuno says. “AML investigations happen everywhere, not just in the Netherlands. So often they have the documentation ready to go.”
Wwft enforcement elsewhere is often not as strict as in the Netherlands. “The Netherlands is the good boy of the class.” And that’s only a good thing as far as Nuno is concerned. “It is likely that guidelines in Europe and beyond regarding the AML will be tightened in the future. The Netherlands is already leading the way in this respect. Should these tighten up, then our clients are already used to strict controls.”
Role model
Pereira assists the more affluent, including when it comes to supporting good deeds or doing “impact investment” indicates Nuno. In addition, Pereira annually transfers five percent of its profits to a charity that includes Pereira employees on the board. In addition, Pereira supports the Tax Assistance Foundation. This provides free legal assistance to people with low incomes.
Collaboration ComplianceWise
But no matter who the client is, using Grub helps Pereira be compliant with the AML, but the human factor always remains. “In some cases a high risk is issued in Grub when it is not justified, especially with international clients. For example, a client may operate in a corrupt country but be active in an industry that has nothing to do with that corruption. And they don’t do business with the local government. It makes sense then that Grub sees a high risk, but we can make a different assessment from our expertise.”
So the scope for doing that in Grub is certainly possible. “That’s the nice thing about the cooperation. I run into something, I can call immediately and we look for a solution together. Now we have set up the points for high-risk differently. In addition, the integration with AFAS, which we are still working hard on, helps to have a complete overview of all customers.” Any customer added in AFAS will soon also be automatically added to Grub. “And if I run into issues there too, I call right away. I have nothing to complain about.”
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