Austrac has changed its rules for customer identification, allowing banks and other financial institutions conducting customer due diligence under their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing obligations to gather information about a customer from sources other than the customer.Under the old rules, information about a customer collected for customer due diligence had to be sourced from the customer.Following the implementation of Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Rules Amendment Instrument 2016 (No.1), reporting entities will be able to obtain information from independent sources.Austrac has also aligned the electronic safe harbour provisions that apply to beneficial owners with those that apply to individual customers. There is one mandatory component with regard to verification (name) and three discretionary components (residential address, date of birth or customer transaction history).