Moreover, the regulatory bodies have significant role in the implementation of many standards, thus imparting some discretion or considerable flexibility in regard to application of general principles. In particular, the inevitable role of self-regulatory bodies in regard to many of the standards makes it difficult to impact large elements of hardness to their soft law nature.
However, there are several ways in which greater harmonisation could be encouraged. For example, model legislations like the one by Commonwealth Secretariat on money laundering will help both expeditious processing and relative clarity of concepts as well as definitions. This approach is of particular significance due to the predominant cross-border nature of money laundering operations.