Member Spotlight — Personr: Closing the compliance gap for Australia's regulated industries
Australia has recently cracked down on financial crime, expanding its Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) regime to new industries.
These 'Tranche Two' obligations came into effect on 1 July, requiring accountants, lawyers, and real estate agents who provide designated services to meet strict new compliance standards for the first time.
For businesses navigating this shift, the change has been significant.
That's why Personr has been by the side of newly regulated industries from the beginning, offering in-person events and webinars, educational resources, and platform demos to ease the transition through a mix of innovation and education.
Personr at a glance
Personr's story started with a personal experience of the impacts of financial crime.
In 2019, co-founder Charlie Westerman had his identity stolen, an experience that exposed just how fragmented compliance systems were.
Alongside co-founder Nick Ahrens, he set out to build a platform to help prevent fraud, and Personr was created.
Personr has since grown to become the critical compliance infrastructure for regulated entities, and an end-to-end platform that hundreds of businesses nationwide trust to help them meet their AML obligations.
That growth reflects Personr's mission: to make powerful financial crime-fighting tools accessible through a single, unified platform.
Personr allows businesses to centralise and manage compliance tasks, including policy hosting, risk assessments, and record-keeping, all in one place.
It also provides access to Know Your Customer (KYC) data across 50+ countries, Know Your Business (KYB) verification in 200+ jurisdictions, and the ability to verify more than 12,000 document types and perform global AML screening.
That combination has earned Personr industry recognition, including a 2025 nod from Aventine Labs as one of the most comprehensive and innovative AML platforms in Australia, and a finalist placing at the 2025 Blockies Awards for AML, Data, Identity and Security Leader of the Year.
Industry challenges
With close to 100,000 businesses newly regulated under Tranche Two, the industry's biggest hurdle has been practical implementation and education.
Many firms are navigating AML obligations for the first time, with little in-house compliance expertise and limited clarity on what "good compliance" looks like in practice.
To help provide clarity on the practical side of compliance, Personr has delivered AML events, workshops, and resources to help firms move beyond theory into practical implementation.
Recent innovations aiding regulated industries
Compliance Suite
Personr Co-Founder Nick Ahrens said the company has focused heavily on product innovation and development.
This year, Personr has launched two Australian-first products: the Compliance Suite and the Trust Reader.
"The Compliance Suite and Trust Reader make ongoing compliance accessible and affordable, even for small professional services firms without a dedicated compliance team, like many of the newly regulated Tranche Two businesses," Mr Ahrens said.
"Our goal is to raise the compliance floor for the entire sector, so good practice becomes the default rather than the exception."
The Compliance Suite gives businesses access to:
Obligations Register: translates complex legislation into clear, trackable tasks
Controls Engine: automates compliance actions triggered by risk events
AML Compliance Officer Module: centralises compliance officer responsibilities and reporting
Compliance Calendar: tracks every critical deadline, tailored to the business, automatically
Evidence Pack: compiles audit-ready documentation, eliminating last-minute scrambling
Trust Reader
This sits alongside Personr's onboarding and KYC/KYB tools that customers already rely on.
Through the Trust Reader, Personr customers can automatically extract all material parties from trust deeds and self-managed super fund (SMSF) deeds, helping newly regulated industries cut down both the cost and time of AML compliance.
For trusts, it identifies trustees, settlors, beneficiaries, appointors, and protectors. For SMSFs, it identifies individual or corporate trustees, members, and other roles relevant to ownership and control.
The Trust Reader is the first tool of its kind in the Australian market.
Personr's growth
Personr's growth has been striking: over the past year, the company has grown its customer base fivefold and its revenue twelvefold.
That momentum reflects both the scale of the compliance problem Tranche Two has created and growing confidence in Personr's approach to solving it.
Personr looks forward to continuing to support regulated businesses across Australia and the world.
Learn more: https://personr.co/
See Personr’s customer stories: https://personr.co/customers
