The customer identification and verification procedures used in Australia's anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism finance regime need to be overhauled, submissions to a review of the AML/CTF Act argue.The submissions describe the current system as inflexible and failing to make use of developments in technology that would improve accuracy and efficiency for reporting entities.The Australian Finance Conference said the government should support the availability of various sources of reliable and independent electronic data and trusted digital identities for customer identification purposes.The AFC said: "We support the development by the Attorney-General's Department of its Document Verification Service for use by private sector entities for AML/CTF verification of names, dates of birth and document numbers for government issued documents such as passports, citizenship certificates, visas, Medicare cards and drivers licences."The ability of our members to verify customer identity utilising electronic means, either at the outset of the provision of a designated service or at various points in its life, is essential."The Australian Bankers Association called for simplified customer due diligence within corporate entities. It said: "A bank may have to separately identify a business customer that has an insurance product, wealth management, trade finance and leasing products."Other jurisdictions rely on mechanisms such as a group introducers certificate, which allows for sharing of information between different entities in the same group."One potential option that is operating in other countries is to have a centralised KYC service provided by a third party that is government approved and where customers can register once."The Australia Financial Markets Association said the government should remove restrictions on information sharing among the affiliates of international companies. It said: "The Act has the effect of preventing an Australian entity that lodges a suspicious matter report with Austrac from providing information about the matter to another related entity that is not part of the same designated business group. "In practice, the Australian subsidiary of an international investment bank cannot disclose information about SMRs to its head office or parent entity without risking a breach."The AFC said the government should look at the requirement that customer identification information has to be collected directly from the customer. It said: "This is not a requirement under FATF [the Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental regulatory standards body] recommendations and does not reflect the fact that for many customers (particularly non-individuals) an appropriate source of some information may be an adviser (lawyer or accountant) or a search of government records such as the ASIC companies register."The Customer Owned Banking Association said that customer "self-attestation" represented an efficient and cost-effective alternative for authorised deposit-taking institutions to undertake customer due diligence.  It said: "This option should be available to reporting entities, particularly given the Commonwealth Document Verification Service has recently become available to the private sector to verify passports, visas, Australian citizenship certificates, Medicare cards and some state and territory drivers' licences in real time."