Why am I being asked to provide bank statements?
As part of your verification, the organisation that requested your Thirdfort check may ask you to provide bank statements. You can do this by connecting to your bank or uploading your statements as photos or digital files (PDFs). By law, when dealing with large amounts of money, solicitors and law firms have to understand where that money originates from. This helps stop fraud and prevents money laundering.
Why is this so important in the property market?
Property transactions are high risk and involve the transfer of large sums of money - this makes the property market a big target for fraudsters and criminals. With an excess of 4 billion pounds of fraud in conveyancing per year, solicitors and law firms have an obligation to identify any client who pays money and know how the money was generated. Proving a client's source of funds is an essential phase in the conveyancing process and by law, a solicitor cannot proceed with your purchase without this evidence.
What are Anti-Money Laundering (AML) checks?
An AML check is an identity assessment to ensure that any person transferring or investing money is who they claim to be. This ensures that the invested money involved comes from a legitimate source. AML regulations are mandated by both national and international authorities globally and these types of checks place a wide variety of screening and monitoring obligations on financial institutions and law firms. For the legal industry, part of these checks involves verifying the source of a client's funds.
The Thirdfort Approach
Some companies ask for paper bank statements, which can be slow and time-consuming. Here at Thirdfort, we utilise government-backed Open Banking technology so that you have the option to provide your statements digitally, in minutes. We know this isn't for everyone, so if preferred, you can upload photos or digital files (PDFs). You can read more on how to do that here.
Thirdfort is regulated and authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) – the same regulator as high-street banks - so you can feel secure in the knowledge that your financial data is treated with the utmost respect.