Reporting entity

A reporting entity is a person on whom the Prevention of Money-laundering Act, 2002 places the duties of identifying customers, keeping records and reporting transactions. The term is defined in section 2(1)(wa) and covers banking companies, financial institutions, intermediaries and persons carrying on a designated business or profession, which by section 2(1)(sa) includes real estate agents. An ordinary operating company is not itself one.

The duties reach the company through the reporting entities it deals with. Section 12 requires transaction records to be kept for five years from the transaction and identity records for five years after the relationship ends, and section 13 allows a penalty of not less than ten thousand rupees and up to one lakh rupees for each failure. Reporting entities meet those duties by asking their customers for beneficial ownership data, so a company's own register has to match what it tells its bank. The position is stated as at 21 September 2026.