A founder sits ready to sign. The money is arranged, the draft deed has been reviewed, the adviser has cleared the agenda, and the notary asks one more question about the payment route. It can feel late, even irritating.
On 6 May 2026, the Bureau Financieel Toezicht gave that moment a public explanation. Its renewed accountants protocol for notaries gives sharper insight into office finances, integrity, procedures, and internal control.
The practical reading is simple. Dutch notaries still carry a high-trust role. What changes is the proof standard. Who may release money? Which checks were done? Is the shareholder register current? Can the file explain the source of funds without leaning on memory?
Why the question comes earlier
The BFT feedback is concrete. The renewed protocol was prepared for reporting over 2024, and 2025 was the first year in which the amended approach was used. BFT reviewed all 665 submitted reports. By the end of March 2026, it had sent 102 reminders for missing or incomplete submissions. Around 40 notaries were told to provide a follow-up report.
For the market, the message is practical. A procedure in a drawer no longer carries much weight on its own. The office has to show, from its own records, that the procedure works.
BFT's attention points included missing or unused payment procedure descriptions, weak or absent technically enforced four-eyes controls, independent payment authority for people who were not notaries or observers, and shared bank cards for third-party accounts.
Those are cash weaknesses, not abstract compliance points. In a notarial office, client money often waits for a property transfer, mortgage, estate settlement, share transfer, or another transaction where timing and trust sit together. If a payment can move without clear personal approval, the risk is operational.
The Amsterdam Court of Appeal judgment ECLI:NL:GHAMS:2025:786 shows why supervisors care about this. It concerned a BFT complaint against two notaries after long-running fraud by a bookkeeper. The court summary refers to a negative client-funds position and shortcomings in administrative organisation and internal controls. The complaint was partly upheld and a reprimand followed.
Where the founder feels it
For a small company, the change may appear as a slower conversation before the notarial deed. A BV formation, share transfer, amendment of articles, refinancing, property purchase, or estate-linked business matter can all run through the notary's desk. The commercial agreement may be finished. The file may not yet be strong enough.
KVK explains the dependency plainly. A notary registers a BV or NV in incorporation in the Business Register. A BV receives its shareholder register from the notary when it starts. Selling BV shares or changing articles of association is arranged through the notary and recorded in a notarial deed.
KVK also says the board remains responsible for keeping the shareholder register correct. That point deserves more attention than it often gets. The notary proves and records key moments, but the company cannot outsource its own memory.
Return to the founder at the signing table. The notary is not asking because the founder is suspicious by default. The notary is asking because ownership, authority, identity, and money may later have to be read by a bank, accountant, supervisor, counterparty, tax file, or court.
Money routes need a clean story
The Wwft context makes the pressure sharper. FIU Nederland says notaries must report unusual transactions within their scope, including completed and intended transactions. That scope includes buying or selling registered property, managing money or other values, establishing mortgage rights on registered property, and acting for a client in financial or real-estate transactions.
FIU's 2025 annual overview gives the wider background around payment routes. FIU reported more than 3 million unusual transactions in 2025 and 92,000 transactions declared suspicious. It also highlighted third-party payments as a laundering risk, including one analysis in which 2,000 third-party-payment transactions to Dutch companies were declared suspicious, with a value of €300 million.
For an owner-manager, the useful lesson is straightforward. A payment made by someone other than the buyer, through a related party, a family route, a holding company, or a cross-border account may be perfectly explainable. But it has to be explainable early. The week before completion is a poor moment to reconstruct why money took the route it took.
Banks sit in the same chain. BFT has noted that banks have Wwft duties and may ask notaries for information about transactions through third-party accounts, while notaries have confidentiality duties. Since early 2023, notaries can issue a bank declaration confirming that they performed their gatekeeper role and Wwft client investigation carefully, without sharing confidential information.
That is not paperwork for its own sake. It is a controlled bridge between two trust duties.
Delay has a price
CBS reported that notarial services were 7.7 percent more expensive in the first quarter of 2026 than one year earlier. Legal services, including law firms, notaries, and bailiff offices, had the largest revenue increase within business services, at 6.3 percent. Business services revenue as a whole was almost 5 percent higher year on year.
Kadaster and CBS also reported that existing owner-occupied home prices in May 2026 were 4.4 percent higher than a year earlier. The average transaction price was €487,383. Larger sums moving through controlled channels give the notarial file more weight, not less.
So the cost is not only the fee. For a small business, the heavier cost is often delay: a refinancing drawdown that waits, a buyer who becomes impatient, a shareholder exit that slips, or a property completion that cannot move because proof is incomplete.
The practical adjustment is modest. Speed improves when deeds, shareholder registers, board decisions, powers of attorney, UBO evidence, source-of-funds explanations, loan agreements, bank confirmations, and ID evidence tell the same story before the notary becomes urgent.
Dutch notarial trust is not disappearing. It is being asked to show its workings more often, and in a form that other parties can rely on. For the founder at the signing table, the best way to protect speed is to treat evidence as part of the deal, not as paperwork after the deal.
Need a cleaner transaction file before the notary starts asking urgent questions?
The data, sourcing, and analysis behind this article were conducted by Paolo Maria Pavan. AI was not used to identify sources, build the factual basis, or produce the analytical judgment contained here. AI was used only as a drafting aid. The final English text was personally reviewed, edited, and approved by Paolo Maria Pavan before publication.
