Source of Funds Best Practice Guide for Law Firms

Thirdfort’s Source of Funds

• Our SoF product comprises of two parts:
  • A questionnaire designed to collect all information and supporting evidence about the origin of funds for a purchase or gift
  • Bank statement collection using open banking with risk analysis to save you time in reviewing the funds info and risk areas
• You can read more about exactly what this check comprises of on our help centre: Verifying Source of Funds with Thirdfort

What is open banking?

• Open banking is a secure and transparent way for your clients to instantly share their recent financial history and other selected data with you Via Thirdfort. Your clients are likely using it all over the place already, HMRC and utility companies all use open banking to enable users to share funds.
• With open banking, your client is always in control of their financial data and who they share it with. Thirdfort does not have any visibility of a client’s online banking login credentials.
• You can read more about it here, or share this client-facing guide with your clients if they are unsure.
• Our product is more than just bank statements. You should select the Source of Funds questionnaire and Bank statements in conjunction on the check initiation page to experience the full benefit of all of our analysis.

Benefits for you

• Fake PDFs can be obtained online for as little as £10, or easily doctored in editing suites. How do you know that the financial data you’ve been provided is real & accurate?
• A full Thirdfort bank statement analysis will save you on average over 30-minutes to an hour of review time, freeing you up to focus on the work that matters.

Benefits for client

• It’s time-consuming for the client to find and either upload or photograph their statements, when our bank connection takes only 2 clicks and their fingerprint/passkey to log in.
• Security
  • No risk of interception like with emails.
  • Full control over their sensitive information - they can revoke access immediately after the statement has been obtained, or it will be automatically revoked after 90 days.
  • Any provider using Open banking tech has to be fully regulated and approved by the FCA, and adhere to strict financial regulations.

Recommended process

• Introduce the concept of Thirdfort & share Thirdfort app leaflet
• Order their SoF check, either in the same check as their ID task or separately after ID is completed depending on internal processes.
• Inform them that you need **their bank statements to comply with ML regs, and open banking is the most secure and quickest ****way to share these. Some firms make this mandatory and see it as a red flag if clients outright refuse to share this data.
  • Share our open banking video with clients to explain what the software is and how much quicker and more secure it is than manual methods. If you think they might not engage with the video, you can share the following summary with them:
    • Data is end-to-end encrypted throughout the journey
    • No risk of interception like with emails
    • Thirdfort has read-only access for 90 days (the industry standard) and the client can revoke this as soon as their check is completed
    • The technology was developed by and for leading UK banks
    • Thirdfort is regulated by the FCA for open banking and has the latest ISO27001 security certification
  • Ensure the client understands which accounts you’re expecting to see and why.
  • If they are unsure or have questions, they should get in touch with our support team immediately who will be happy to chat about the security, process or data involved in the banking task. Live chat can be found in the menu of the app or phone on +44 (0) 161 768 0083 (Option 1)

Top tips

• SoF is billed at once per matter. This means that you can order (up to five) SoF/banking tasks under the same file reference and only one charge will be raised.
  • Perfect if a matter is taking longer than usual and you want to refresh a client’s AML information before completion.
  • Also gives you the freedom to request secondary banking tasks from the client if they neglect to link accounts displaying the correct funds.
• If you think your team could do with some training on how to best use Thirdfort’s Source of Funds, speak to your Account Manager or Thirdfort representative and we’ll be more than happy to set this up.

Helpful resources

• You can watch a full breakdown of how to interpret our SoF & banking reports here
• Or check out our example PDF report here
• Read more about how we bill for this feature on our help centre: Source of Funds billing
• Many more helpful resources can be found on our help centre, as well as a live chat directly with our professional support team.