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

[Yellow Fang]

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.

 

[Archie_tect]

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.

 

[oldwheels]

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.

 

[Archie_tect]

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!

 

[nickyboy]

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

 

[Yellow Fang]

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.