Our services are subject to supervision by HMRC, as such we comply with strict money laundering regulations. These regulations require that we confirm your identity and also the beneficial owners of any company or entity.
We aim to make this process as easy as possible, and use advanced identity verification systems and data sources to identify the beneficial owners and confirm your identity.
The requirements for each person/company are listed below, if you have any issues please contact us and we will assist.
Personal ID Requirements
UK Resident
As a UK resident we require:
- British/Irish passport or UK/NI drivers licence (we cannot accept expired documents)
- Have been at your current address for >12m
- Bank or building society statement, or utility bill dated within the last 3 months, at your current address in your name (not a mobile phone bill or credit card statement)
We can confirm your identity and address digitally using our online system. You will be sent a link by email to download the ‘Credas’ app, they are our trusted verification provider. The app will then guide you through scanning your documents and ask you to take a selfie, once submitted we will be in touch if we require any further documentation from you.
EU Resident
If you are resident outside of the UK, but within the EU resident if you have:
- EU passport (we cannot accept expired documents)
- Have been at your current address for >12m
- Certified bank or building society statement, or utility bill dated within the last 3 months, at your current address in your name (not a mobile phone bill or credit card statement)
Please note your address proof needs to be certified, you can find more information about the certification requirements below.
We can confirm your identity digitally using our online system. You will be sent a link by email to download the ‘Credas’ app, they are our trusted verification provider. The app will then guide you through scanning your certified documents and ask you to take a selfie, once submitted we will be in touch if we require any further documentation from you.
ROW Resident
If you are resident outside of the UK/EU, we will require:
- Certified Passport (we cannot accept expired documents)
- Have been at your current address for >12m
- Certified bank or building society statement, or utility bill dated within the last 3 months, at your current address in your name (not a mobile phone bill or credit card statement)
Please note your documents need to be certified, you can find more information about the certification requirements below.
We are currently unable to fully confirm your identity digitally using our online system. We will be in touch to request the documents required.
Credas Checks
Credas will guide you through the verification process, and also have a handy guide to help you through the process. If you experience any issues please let us know.
Identifying Ultimate Beneficial Owners
When forming a company on your behalf, or providing our registered office service we will initially identify the beneficial owners of the company.
These are any persons who control 25% or more of the company, these can also be a another corporate entity, in which case the beneficial owner may be related to another entity. It can also be a trust or charity, there are also cases where there is no direct beneficial owner in which case we will work with you to identify the relevant parties.
If the entities are outside of the UK we will require further documentation and proof to identify the persons/entities involved, we will provide a detailed list of requirements in this case.
For each beneficial owner, they will be subject to the personal ID checks above, and documentation will be required before we can verify their identity.
Document Certification
For some documents, we will require them to be certified. This means they need to be confirmed as copies of the original documents by someone in good standing.
This can be a:- bank or building society official
- councillor
- minister of religion
- dentist
- chartered accountant
- solicitor or notary
- teacher or lecturer
The person you ask should not be:
- related to you
- living at the same address
- in a relationship with you
Take the photocopied document and the original and ask the person to certify the copy by:
- writing ‘Certified to be a true copy of the original seen by me’ on the document
- signing and dating it
- printing their name under the signature
- adding their occupation, address, telephone number and any professional affilliations (such as an acca number)
Then upload the document in credas as your supporting document, or email it to us if requested. We may ask the person who has certified the document to confirm it was them, and also check their occupation/professional affilliations.
We aim to make the verification process as smooth as possible, however there may be scenarios where we require additional verification or information to meet our strict requirements, we will communicate any potential issues or additional requirements as soon as they are identified.