AML checks house buying

[Housebuyingdramallama]

I’m in the middle of buying a house. My conveyancer has asked me to account for my transactions in accordance with their AML checks. I have no issue with this and have given them access to my accounts.

The problem that I have is that I often move money around chasing a higher interest rate between my existing accounts within three different banks. Am I expected to map every transaction to account for the money?

Some I acquired through redundancy and the rest saved over time from my salary. I presumed this was all fairly normal, but apparently not and trying to remember where and why I moved money between two different banks three years ago is proving a bit of a nightmare.

I am genuinely not up to anything sinister, I just want to move house. Any advice?

It is a requirement for your conveyancer to account for the financial transactions - not just to prove that you have the money, but how it had accumulated over the years from the time you started saving.i appreciate you may feel like it’s very intrusive, but if your conveyancer doesn’t do this then if the file is audited their firm can be fined a huge amount (enough to potentially mean their business is closed by the sra) and they can also face sanctions personally. As money has been moved back and forth it means that it’s a more complex procedure. It can take hours and hours to check all of this and note the evidence so please have patience with your legal rep.

I have a few matters on at the moment where money is coming from abroad and that adds an extra layer of complexity.

The SRA requirements are ever increasing and it shouldn’t be on the lawyers to shoulder this burden when the money is sitting in accounts already, but it is what it is.

You can help speed up the process by gathering all of the statements, labelling these and providing an overview (with reference to the numbered attachments). Trust me - your conveyancer will thank you this, and it means they then just need to check through what you’ve sent.

If it is very complex then your conveyancer may need to uplift fees as they will spend longer than anticipated on checking these.

I hope this helps.

Ps moving the money to find a better interest rate is entirely acceptable, you just need to state this as a reason.

If it has been saved from your salary then expect to provide wage slips, and your affordability will be considered. Just for clarity, this means that if you’re saving from salary but your bank statements show saving but no payments out for rent, travel expenses, utilities, food, then expect to be asked who is covering those costs as that would be a potential concern. If you can show that your expected expenses are paid and it’s the money that is left over that has been used for savings then that will be spot on.

Thanks for a comprehensive response - I am more than happy to be completely transparent. I’m having to trawl through six years worth of accounts with three different banks to trace my own money. It’s time consuming and frustrating, but my
only objective is to move house, so I’m happy to spend my bank holiday weekend doing this.

Trust me - it’s just as frustrating for conveyancers to have to do this and we do appreciate when you put this all together as it really does help!

There are AI packages which claim to assist however, when you look at what they have ticked off it is never sufficient and we then have to unpick and start over again. It’s time consuming and we’d much rather be concentrating on the actual legal work (checking that the title is sound on the property you’re buying).

Hopefully all will go well and you’ll be in your new property in no time. It’s very exciting but it’s also incredibly stressful.

It's normal and expected to move money around for better interest rates - anyone savvy enough to be in a position to buy now will have been doing the same thing, and all solicitors will know that. I had to provide 9 years of statements for 5 different accounts to meet aml regulations. It was fine as I like to file them away by year and just had them copied and sent with a written description of transfers I'd made. It probably took the conveyencer a while to look through them all, but I provided exactly what was asked for and the conveyencer got to meet their SRA requirements, and it was a fixed fee service for me, so everyone was happy.

It's ridiculous that ordinary people are having to jump though these hoops to justify/prove their financial transactions and meanwhile a blind eye is turned to the shops on every high street that are obvious money laundering fronts.

Unfortunately I’ve just realised that some
of the accounts I have closed and don’t have access to, so I’m going to have to request them from my bank which will take a while. Interestingly if I wanted to do a huge extension on my new home paid for in cash, no one would bat an eyelid.

Well, yes.

because that’s not a high risk transaction for money laundering. Solicitors need to account for every penny that enters their client account, because if it were to be laundered money, they can also be convicted.

And I appreciate this, however tracing years of saving through numerous accounts is proving to be an absolute and time consuming nightmare.

I mean, you know from the outset what the AML requirements are.

Look at it from the solicitor’s eyes. You transfer money in from random sources, have no proof where it’s come from and all they have to go off is you saying that it’s from an account that was yours, but you don’t have the statements anymore.

If that was proceeds of crime and they accepted it, and let you buy your house, it’s money laundering. Your proceeds of crime have become “clean” in a house.