FINTRAC requirements for Ontario realtors: records & 5-year retention

What FINTRAC requires from real estate agents

Real estate brokerages, brokers, and sales representatives are reporting entities under Canada’s anti–money-laundering law (the PCMLTFA), supervised by FINTRAC. That means every agent has identity-verification, record-keeping, and reporting obligations on the transactions they work — not just the brokerage’s compliance officer.

In practice the core duties are: verify the identity of the parties you deal with, keep the supporting records, watch for and report suspicious transactions, and retain everything so it can be produced if FINTRAC asks.

• Verify client identity using an accepted method (government photo ID, credit-file, or dual-process).
• Keep an information record with the client’s details for the transaction.
• Make a third-party determination (are they acting for someone else?).
• Keep receipt-of-funds records and report large cash transactions and suspicious transactions.
• Retain the records for five years and produce them within 30 days of a FINTRAC request.

What changed on October 1, 2025

Amendments that took effect on October 1, 2025 expanded who agents must verify. Agents now have to verify the identity of unrepresented parties — people on the other side of a deal who do not have their own representative — and apply the third-party determination and record-keeping rules to them as well.

The practical effect is more identity documents to collect, from more people, on more files — exactly the kind of document chase that gets missed when it lives in email. RECO has also reminded registrants that failing to verify identity properly is a discipline risk, not just a FINTRAC one.

How long must realtors keep FINTRAC records? (5 years)

Records that support FINTRAC obligations must generally be kept for five years and be retrievable within 30 days of a request from FINTRAC. That includes identity-verification records, the information record, and receipt-of-funds records tied to the transaction.

Five years of identity and income documents for every client is a real storage and retrieval problem. Loose email attachments and shared drives make a 30-day production request stressful; a single, organized, timestamped record makes it routine.

How Hivi-X helps you collect and organize FINTRAC records

Hivi-X turns the documents agents commonly attach to FINTRAC obligations into a reusable checklist you share with the client on my-id.ca. The client uploads government ID, income, and consent from their phone or computer; you track what is still missing, approve each item, and assemble a clean, timestamped PDF package. Hivi-X does not perform identity verification, make third-party determinations, or guarantee regulatory compliance.

Everything stays in Canada: documents are stored on Canadian servers, encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM, and voice summaries use self-hosted AI — client data is never sent to third-party AI providers. This page is general information, not legal or compliance advice; always follow current FINTRAC guidance and your brokerage’s policy.