What is Transfer Vault compliance and KYC process?

For businesses looking to open an international account through a bank or other financial institution, they’ll encounter Compliance and Know Your Customer (KYC) checks.

These are designed to prevent money laundering and other criminal activity — i.e., for banks and other institutions to understand who’s using their services.

At Transfer Vault, we combine a human touch with a risk-based approach to serve clients from 140+ countries.

Why transaction monitoring matters

Trillions of dollars of global payments are made between international accounts across the financial landscape every year.

The Bank of England has estimated that the value of cross-border payments will increase from almost $150 trillion in 2017 to over $250 trillion by 2027 — a rise of over $100 trillion in just a decade.

For banks and other financial institutions, it’s crucial to know where these streams of money have come from and where they’re going.

Why? It’s all a matter of accountability. Anti-money laundering (AML) initiatives have been established to prevent criminals from hiding their funds.

Banks are responsible for upholding that process and ensuring the money they look after is clean — which is precisely where compliance and Know Your Customer (KYC) come in.

What is compliance and KYC?

Compliance and Know Your Customer (KYC) are measures taken by banks and other financial institutions to ensure that clients comply with any laws or internal procedures.

When prospective clients apply to a bank to use its services, compliance and KYC are the first stages they’ll encounter.

Compliance is part of a due diligence process designed for banks to understand the company they’ll be working with — namely, by reviewing the documentation the client has submitted as part of their application.

For example, they can begin to assess the risk involved with the client based upon which country they come from or which industry they’re based in.

What is Transfer Vault’s approach to compliance and KYC?

We’re proud to work with businesses from what are often considered ‘high-risk’ countries but never high-risk industries.

At Transfer Vault, we adopt a more human approach to serving clients in 140+ countries worldwide.

This personal touch begins with our Sales team’s initial phone call during your onboarding and continues to when you need to open an international account or make an overseas payment.

Our approach to compliance at Transfer Vault consists of a ‘three lines of defense’ model, which is standard financial services practice. The three stages are as follows:

Conversation with our Sales team: Think of this as a pre-vetting process. During this introductory conversation with one of our dedicated sales team members, they’ll request more information about your business — which industry you’re a part of, where your company is based, and request documents detailing your business activities. This step is crucial early in the process to ensure it doesn’t fall within our list of prohibited industries or countries. It’s also your opportunity to ask any questions you have about Transfer Vault and how we can best support your business.
Compliance: The second line of defense, our compliance team, will then comprehensively review the information and documents you supply as part of your application. KYC (Know Your Customer) is an integral part of this process, as we need to understand factors such as the structure of your company, where your directors are based, and evidence of funds. It’s important as it allows us to verify our customers are who they say they are. Based on the outcome of the above, our compliance team may need to request additional information — more on that a little further down this page.
Anti-money laundering and transaction monitoring: A crucial part of our compliance approach, we’ll need evidence of who you’re receiving funds from, along with where you’re paying out to. This tranche of the process allows us to determine the credible nature of your business and that it isn’t involved in or related to criminal activity. The documentation you provide during your onboarding process will help us better facilitate your international payments — and more quickly, too.

What documents will I need for my compliance and KYC checks?

While applying for a Transfer Vault International Business Account, it helps to have the following information ready about your company:

For all company directors, major shareholders and account operators:

For the company itself:

However, the level of documentation we require can also be based on the outcome of our compliance process.

With each business applicant assessed against a risk matrix, we’ll then apply a suitable level of due diligence.

Please speak to our Sales team if you’d like more information.

What industries does Transfer Vault not accept?

At Transfer Vault, we don’t work with the following industries:

How does Transfer Vault’s human approach to compliance and KYC benefit me?

With traditional banks continually making the transition towards automated systems or relying on outdated processes, Transfer Vault was founded with a different philosophy.

Around 25% of our business personnel is devoted to compliance, emphasizing our commitment to onboarding efficiency and providing our corporate clients someone to speak to whenever needed.

We provide a personal touch: By giving you a human contact throughout your compliance process, we can keep you fully informed as you look to open an international account. Whether that’s offering immediate advice on documentation you need or answering any queries you may have. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world. If you’re a non-resident looking to open an International Business Account, one of our team will be available to answer any queries you have.

We’re more agile: Compare and contrast that against your experience with a larger bank. Chatbots as your key contact, slower turnarounds, unclear communications. Most crucially, they don’t make the effort to understand your business — unless, of course, you’ve reached a point where your revenue makes them sit up and take notice. When applying for an International Business Account, our human processes enable us to have corporate clients onboarded within days.

We genuinely care: In an industry of Know Your Customer, we genuinely get to know ours. We make every effort to learn about our clients, which countries they pay out to or receive funds from, or where they might be expanding to next. By only ever being a phone call or email away, our customers can feel completely supported during the compliance process. Business relationships and timely responses are nothing without honest communication — which is why we’re sure our human approach will only become more in demand in an industry where automation has become the norm.

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