# Problem with completing business profile because of neighbour's non-residency



## Yellow Fang (12 Sep 2020)

The management company for our block of flats has a business account with the farking stupid Natwest. The company is not-for-profit, and the directors are the five owners of the flats. The management company pays for the electricity, insurance, and any maintenance that needs doing. The problem is one of the directors now lives in the far east and has let his flat. The bloody, stupid Natwest are demanding we complete our business profile, but they won't let send him a copy of his passport. They were demanding he get a solictor or accountant out there to sign a letter to say who he is. I am not sure why he won't do this, but he his English accountants have sent them a letter to say they have known him eight years. They keep sending us letters to say we can update our business profile on-line, but they won't accept unverified passport photos, and you can't upload any solicitor's letters to verify them. They keep threatening to stop our bank account. They'd done this twice already. 

So, are all the banks like this or are there any better ones?
Is there any other type of account we can get?
Is there any other way around this?


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## Cycleops (12 Sep 2020)

Why doesn't he go into a solicitors office, take his passport, copy it and get them to swear it?


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## Yellow Fang (13 Sep 2020)

Cycleops said:


> Why doesn't he go into a solicitors office, take his passport, copy it and get them to swear it?


Not quite sure really, but otoh why won't Natwest accept a letter from his British accountants?


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## kynikos (13 Sep 2020)

...because they want something a bit more concrete than "Mr X has been known to us personally for eight years" which is not very high on the hierarchy of positive identification of their client.


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## Drago (13 Sep 2020)

It's anti money laundering regs. You've little choice but to comply, or else find another method of administering the building.


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## Cycleops (13 Sep 2020)

His reluctance to comply with his full ID might indicate he wouldn't welcome a stewards enquiry from HMRC.


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## Yellow Fang (13 Sep 2020)

kynikos said:


> ...because they want something a bit more concrete than "Mr X has been known to us personally for eight years" which is not very high on the hierarchy of positive identification of their client.



From a firm of accountants? I can identify him. He was my neighbour.


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## kynikos (13 Sep 2020)

Yellow Fang said:


> From a firm of accountants? I can identify him. He was my neighbour.


Which might be OK in some situations as indeed might be a letter from a firm of accountants but neither will satisfy NatWest who will have an MLR (Money Laundering Regulations) Compliance Policies and Procedures Statement which will set out when and how they will identify their clients. I've not seen their statement but I'd put money on it not accepting a letter from a firm of accountants as ID - and I'm not a gambling man. So your co-director can make as much noise as he likes but it's highly unlikely to get him anywhere with NatWest or any other bank for that matter.

I may be wrong - I'm just a bloke on the internet but I am the main bloke and the nominated officer in a business registered under the MLA.

As Cycleops has intimated, his reluctance to comply is suspicious and is putting your relationship with NatWest at risk.


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## midlife (13 Sep 2020)

Slightly off topic and might have read the OP wrong but is he subletting? Is that allowed


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## Yellow Fang (13 Sep 2020)

midlife said:


> Slightly off topic and might have read the OP wrong but is he subletting? Is that allowed


He has let his flat. I am not sure what the difference is between subletting and letting.


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## Yellow Fang (13 Sep 2020)

kynikos said:


> Which might be OK in some situations as indeed might be a letter from a firm of accountants but neither will satisfy NatWest who will have an MLR (Money Laundering Regulations) Compliance Policies and Procedures Statement which will set out when and how they will identify their clients. I've not seen their statement but I'd put money on it not accepting a letter from a firm of accountants as ID - and I'm not a gambling man. So your co-director can make as much noise as he likes but it's highly unlikely to get him anywhere with NatWest or any other bank for that matter.
> 
> I may be wrong - I'm just a bloke on the internet but I am the main bloke and the nominated officer in a business registered under the MLA.
> 
> As Cycleops has intimated, his reluctance to comply is suspicious and is putting your relationship with NatWest at risk.



I'd be really surprised if he was a money launderer. I'm pretty sure he's not laundering much through our maintenance company. I have now asked him why he did not ask a solicitor/accountant from the country he's living in to verify his identity, but how's a Thai solicitor/accountant more trustworthy than a British solicitor/accountant?

I still think Natwest are incompetent. They keep addressing letters to an ex-neighbour I have not seen for ten years. I have written to them to address their letters to me. They still list someone as a director I've told them isn't any more. Their website does not take into account directors may not all live at the same address or share an office. The website, if you can get on it, allows you to upload passport scans, but not the letter from a solicitor/accountant that corroborates it. Apparently there is some complicated phone app too which you can use to corroborate your ID, but the chances of getting data from that app to Natwest's website must be pretty poor.


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## kynikos (13 Sep 2020)

I'd be surprised if he were a money launderer, very few people are. I'd be surprised if any of my clients, the majority of whom are charities, were either but that doesn't mean I don't have to identify them properly. I suspect, although you don't make it clear, that he's being asked to provide a certified copy of his passport - certified by a solicitor or accountant, which is not the same as a letter from his british accountant.

I can't comment on NatWest's website capabilities and I suspect there's better out there but they'll all want to see director's ID if you want to make the switch so personally I'd concentrate on getting the one missing directors to NatWest rather than five lots to a new bank. If he's adamant that he's not going to provide it to anyone on the terms they ask for then you're going to find yourselves with no bank at all.

It's frustrating, I know. HSBC insisted on a whole raft of stuff from me a couple of years ago despite the fact I had held a current account with them since 1970 and worked for them for 20+ years along the way. Of course the irony is that it was HSBC who were the money launderers and not me.


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## Hacienda71 (13 Sep 2020)

As above, there are very clear guidelines re AML as to when and what id checks are required. I suspect Natwest are simply following the statutory requirements for a bank in this situation. When my 13 year old daughter opened a bank account with HSBC they insisted on ID from me and sight of her passport. She was only putting £150 in to the account.
I have a list of what is acceptable in my profession and a letter from an accountant would not be.
Property is a hot topic and anything to do with it is under scrutiny.


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## Chromatic (14 Sep 2020)

Yellow Fang said:


> He has let his flat. I am not sure what the difference is between subletting and letting.



Sounds like he has let his flat and is not declaring the rental income.


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## bikingdad90 (14 Sep 2020)

As a director of a UK company but domiciled outside the UK the bank has a duty to report overseas persons connected to a UK company in whatever way under the automated exchange rules which disclose affairs to oversee authorities to ensure full compliance with double taxation treaties and appropriate taxation is paid in the relevant countries. The bank also has a duty to comply with criminal corporate offence regulations and AML so a letter from an accountant is not going to cut it. It needs to be a formal document recognised as proof of identity that needs to be provided.


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## Yellow Fang (14 Sep 2020)

Chromatic said:


> Sounds like he has let his flat and is not declaring the rental income.


All his verified passport picture will ascertain is that he is who he says he is, which he is. Whether he's declaring his rental income, the bank won't know. They'll know he's paying his service charges. We have two other directors who've let their flats out. The bank won't know if they're declaring their rental income neither. It's just that being resident in the UK it's not so hard to their their identity verified. They only need a copy of a utility bill, or maybe that and something else, but it's nowhere near as difficult. I asked him if he didn't mind resigning as a director, as it made no difference to the way we made our decisions, but he didn't want to. If he had, I doubt the bank would have any cause to hassle us as much. He was going to come over to Britain to visit his family in April, and get his identity with the bank sorted out then, but Covid stopped that.


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## Archie_tect (15 Sep 2020)

YF, if you have a NatWest Business account you will have a business account manager who you can speak to... ring him/her up and explain the problem and they will help resolve it. My Nat West Business manager is brilliant.

Don't rely on any bank's telephone support from their call centres as you won't get anywhere.


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## oldwheels (16 Sep 2020)

Archie_tect said:


> YF, if you have a NatWest Business account you will have a business account manager who you can speak to... ring him/her up and explain the problem and they will help resolve it. My Nat West Business manager is brilliant.
> 
> Don't rely on any bank's telephone support from their call centres as you won't get anywhere.


I had a cousin who was a Nat West business manager a few years ago and he was desperate to got out of that as he said his main job was to get as many businesses as possible up to their ears in debt to the bank.
No idea about overseas lawyers but in the UK it is easy to get a certified copy of important documents. For a price of course.


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## Archie_tect (16 Sep 2020)

oldwheels said:


> I had a cousin who was a Nat West business manager a few years ago and he was desperate to got out of that as he said his main job was to get as many businesses as possible up to their ears in debt to the bank.
> No idea about overseas lawyers but in the UK it is easy to get a certified copy of important documents. For a price of course.


Sounds horrendous... I can only speak as I find and they've been great for me, but I've always kept within my means so if that strategy was tried with me it didn't work!


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## nickyboy (24 Sep 2020)

Basic KYC (know your client) check. We have this all the time dealing with clients who aren't resident in the UK. In this case, lawyers and accountants in UK that are engaged by these individuals require either sight of the original passport or a notarised copy (and this can't be a scan, this notarised hard copy must be posted to the lawyer and accountants before they will take the overseas individual on as a client

Getting your passport notarised is easy and inexpensive so NatWest reasonably require this as part of their KYC. Good luck getting them to waive this, I doubt they will

If the individual still won't play ball I'd tell them that if they fail to provide this document they will removed as a Director. But you need to see whether the other Directors are allowed to do this by majority vote etc

The individual's UK accountants know exactly what the KYC rules are so they are presumably instructed by the individual not to be particularly helpful


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## Yellow Fang (15 Nov 2020)

The pain is never ending. The chap who lives in Thailand eventually got his ID accepted. It cost him. He had to go to a Thai solicitor to verify his documents. That just left another three of us, plus several ex-directors, who I had repeatedly told them, had sold their flats years ago, and no longer had anything to do with the maintenance company. NatWest gave a postal address, but anything you send them by post, they just ignore. Go into a local NatWest branch and they don't know what you're talking about, because all their business managers are working from home. One of my neighbours went into a NatWest branch so that they could verify his driving certificate. That is, they photocopy it then a member of staff signs it to say it's him. My neighbour scanned it and sent it to me. I uploaded it to their difficult-to-access website (you need a code to access the webpage, and the code is texted to my phone). Then they rejected it because they could not read the signature. So my neighbour had to go back to the branch so the member of staff could write his name on it. Now, we're down to the final person, who is actually someone I have not seen in ten years, but who co-owns the garden flat. He did not want to send me scanned images of his personal documents, which is understandable; so he and his partner went into NatWest to get his IDs verified. Of course, the NatWest branch staff did not know what they were talking about. After refusing to leave, the NatWest branch staff signed photocopies of his documents, but insisted on sending them to the business profile centre themselves. They have no right to do that, but at least that means the documents should have arrived. I come back after a week working away from home. I check on the website and the IDs have not been cleared, and they've sent me another letter telling me they will stop out bank account in December unless they complete our business profile. Of course they don't say whether they have received the letter containing the ID documents, or what was wrong with them if they had received them.


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