When jurisdictions analyze Immediate Outcome 6 (IO.6), they tend to focus on the FIU itself: STRs, analysts, IT systems, case statistics. Egmont’s Europe II horizontal analysis of IO.2, IO.6, R.29 and R.40 shows a broader picture: national cooperation and coordination across all competent authorities are critical determinants of IO.6 effectiveness. The report covers 23 FIUs in the Europe II Regional Group, analyzing mutual evaluations under the FATF methodology and extracting recurring strengths, weaknesses and recommended actions for IO.2, IO.6, R.29 and R.40. One of its clearest findings: robust national cooperation and coordination is present in virtually every high-performing IO.6 jurisdiction and missing in many moderate ones.
Egmont defines National Cooperation & Coordination as the structured and ongoing collaboration between FIUs, law-enforcement agencies (LEAs), prosecutors, supervisors and other competent authorities to ensure effective detection, investigation and prevention of ML/TF.
Key elements of this definition:
Critically, Egmont stresses that effectiveness depends not on the existence of committees and MOUs, but on how actively they are used in practice. Where coordination is weak or underutilised, systems “hinder the full exploitation of financial intelligence”.
The horizontal analysis shows a striking pattern when it looks at how often National Cooperation & Coordination is cited as a strength in IO.6 assessments:
Egmont concludes:
“National Cooperation & Coordination emerges as a key horizontal factor in IO.6 evaluations. Its absence as a strength in many ME jurisdictions reflects limited institutional collaboration and reduced capacity to exploit financial intelligence fully.”
In other words, you rarely see high IO.6 ratings without strong national coordination, and you frequently see moderate ratings where coordination is weak or only partially functional.
In moderate-effectiveness jurisdictions, the report notes that mechanisms for cooperation are often underdeveloped or not fully deployed:
Typical symptoms:
The result is an AML/CFT system that looks coordinated on an organogram, but fails to convert financial intelligence into joined-up enforcement and preventive action.
By contrast, in Substantial and High-effectiveness jurisdictions, National Cooperation & Coordination is consistently identified as a strength. Egmont describes several recurring features:
These aren’t cosmetic governance structures; they are operational mechanisms that connect FIU outputs to real-world outcomes—investigations, prosecutions and confiscations.
Egmont’s conclusion section generalises this point: legal frameworks are not enough. Sustained, impactful effectiveness depends on institutional capacity, sound governance and inter-agency coordination.
Three channels explain the IO.6 link:
From an effectiveness perspective, good coordination turns a set of separate institutions into a single AML/CFT system.
For FIU directors and NFPs (national coordinators), it is useful to conceptualise national cooperation in three layers:
Egmont’s recommended actions under “Institutionalise National Cooperation” align closely with this layered model.
The report’s “Recommendations and Way Forward” chapter translates the high-level message into specific actions:
From an implementation perspective, this can be structured as:
Egmont also points to the need for modern technical platforms and interoperability, including secure communication systems and shared repositories, as part of the broader reform agenda.
For FIUs, this means moving beyond email and ad-hoc document sharing to platform-based coordination. A FIU360-type architecture can support national cooperation by:
In short, technology becomes the backbone for coordination, not just a STR inbox.
Based on Egmont’s findings, a pragmatic agenda for jurisdictions wanting to lift IO.6 through coordination would include:
Egmont’s Europe II horizontal analysis identifies national cooperation and coordination as a key horizontal factor for IO.6: it is a strength in all Substantial and High-effectiveness jurisdictions, but appears far less often in Moderate systems. Effective AML/CFT frameworks use standing coordination bodies, formalised SOPs, feedback loops and secure platforms to connect FIUs, LEAs, supervisors and prosecutors—turning financial intelligence into a genuinely system-wide capability.