Why do I need to provide bank statements?
As part of your verification, the organisation that requested your Thirdfort check may ask you to provide bank statements. 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 can I do if I don't bank online?
We understand that not everyone may use online/mobile banking or may prefer not to connect to their bank to provide a statement. Instead, you can skip the task and upload PDFs or photos of paper bank statements.
How to Skip Open Banking
Step 1:
To get started select to 'Start' the task from your to-do list. You will then be given a brief introduction to the task, when you are ready to begin please press 'Next.'
Step 2:
You will then be given an extended explanation of the task, at the bottom of the screen you will see an option to 'Skip Task.'
You will then see a new screen advising that if you skip this task you will then have the option to upload bank statements instead. When you are ready to skip the task please select 'Skip.'
You will then be returned to your to-do list and the new task to 'Upload Bank Statements' will be available for you to complete.