The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017, as amended, require law firms to carry out customer due diligence, ongoing monitoring and risk assessment to help prevent money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing.
You will be required to provide this information, which we will need to check, before we are able to proceed with your matter. For most people this will mean supplying a current passport or photographic driving licence, your date of birth, and evidence of your address. As part of Birketts’ client onboarding and due diligence process we may use electronic credit reference agencies to search sources of information relating to you. An electronic note is left on your credit record to say that a check has taken place but this is NOT a hard credit check and won’t impact your credit score. Credit reference agencies may keep a record of that information and provide it (and the fact that a search was made) to their other customers for the purpose of verifying identity, to assess credit risk and to prevent fraud, money laundering, and to find debtors. For further information on how credit reference agencies, such as Equifax, process your personal data please refer to the Credit Reference Agency Information Notice.
Source of funds and source of wealth
Depending on the nature of your matter and the risk profile, we may also ask you to explain and provide evidence of the source of funds being used and, where appropriate, your wider source of wealth. This helps us understand how assets have been accumulated and meets our regulatory obligations. We also carry out sanctions screening and other checks to comply with UK financial sanctions and economic crime legislation. In certain circumstances, we are legally required to report suspicious activity to the appropriate authorities and may be prohibited from telling you that such a report has been made.
Our checks are risk‑based, meaning the level of information required may vary depending on the nature of the work, the client type, jurisdictional factors and other risk indicators.
For clients who are not instructing us in their personal capacity, the Regulations also require us to identify and verify additional relevant individuals including, for instance, shareholders and ultimate beneficial owners of companies.
Birketts’ requirements for some of the more common types of client type are as follows:
Limited companies
- evidence of identity and address of a director;
- name and address of shareholders, and confirmation of voting rights/shareholding or anyone else with significant control of the company. Evidence of identity will be required for individuals owning more than 25% of the company, holding more than 25% of the voting rights, or having significant control.
Partnerships
- list of all partners;
- copy of current partnership deed, confirmation of voting rights and who owns the equity.
- evidence of identity and address of any individual who controls more than 25% of the capital or profits or voting rights. If no one then the evidence of identity and address of the partner giving instructions and one other;
Trust
- full name of the trust and country of establishment;
- a copy of the trust deed and any other relevant documents eg. subsequent deeds of appointment, retirement or amendment;
- name, address and date of birth of the settlor, trustees, beneficiaries and any protector or other additional person with control of the trust;
- evidence of identity and address of all trustees;
- proof of registration (where applicable) under the Trust Registration Service.
There may be occasions when we will require further information and evidence of identity depending on the circumstances. We will advise you if any further documentation is required.
In order to minimise any delay caused by the need to comply with these Regulations, please ensure we have the required documents and information as soon as possible. We are required to keep client information under review throughout our relationship with you. This may include periodic refreshes of identity documents or requests for updated information if circumstances change.
We have partnered with Thirdfort and Creditsafe to assist with completion of required client due diligence checks. Further information on these providers is available on request.
