Source of funds & Source of wealth

Why does BullionVault ask for ‘Source of funds’ and ‘Source of wealth’ declarations?

In opening and then validating your BullionVault account, you will have completed our “Know Your Customer” (KYC) process. It confirms your identity, protecting both you and BullionVault from fraud, thanks to you supplying photographic ID, proof of address, and a bank statement.

UK law also obliges* all companies, including BullionVault, to make sure that funds passing through them only come from legitimate sources. The aim is to prevent money laundering, where criminals try to 'wash' the proceeds of crime by using legal businesses such as ours. To keep BullionVault operating safely for all its customers, we must of course comply with the law. So we sometimes need to ask our clients to complete additional checks.

As part of these additional checks, we may ask you to complete declarations about where the funds paid into your BullionVault account came from, or about the source of your wealth more generally. In these instances, we will likely need you to upload documentary evidence to support your declarations.

For example, if your original funds came from the sale of a property, we may need you to upload the deed of sale. Or if the funds came from savings you have built up, we may need you to provide a payslip as evidence of your income.

When do we ask for these declarations?

Whether you validated your BullionVault account recently or some time ago, we may still need to ask you these questions from time to time. UK law, like anti-money laundering regulations worldwide, continue to become tighter. This means we may have to carry out new additional checks and apply them to all our clients, not just new users.

Under UK law, we must also carry out regular reviews of existing accounts, to ensure their details are up-to-date. Following one of these reviews, we may have to ask you for extra documents, such as confirming the bank account a payment came from, or to confirm your sources of funds or wealth.

*See in particular The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2017/692/contents/made; and The Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Regulations 2019: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2019/1511/made