Corporate banking
Evidencing source of funds and source of wealth
Two different questions that are constantly conflated. Source of funds is where this money came from; source of wealth is how you came to have money at all. Banks ask both.
The reality
What the bank is actually deciding.
Source of funds means the origin of the specific money entering the account — a capital injection, a customer payment, a loan drawdown — and is evidenced by transaction records. Source of wealth is the broader question of how the beneficial owner accumulated their assets over a career: a business sold, property disposed of, inherited assets, years of documented salary. Banks ask both, and the second is the one that stops files, because most people have never had to prove it and the documents are scattered across decades and jurisdictions.
What does not work is a single word. 'Savings' is the most common answer given and the least useful, because it describes the destination rather than the origin. What works is a documented narrative: a share purchase agreement showing the sale of a previous business, completion statements from a property sale, audited accounts from an overseas company across several years, tax returns, dividend vouchers, an inheritance grant. It does not have to be exhaustive, but it has to be coherent and it has to be evidenced. The practical difficulty is that these documents live with former accountants, closed companies and overseas registries, and collecting them takes weeks that people have not budgeted.
What gets asked for
- Source of funds
- Origin of the specific money — transaction records
- Source of wealth
- How the assets were accumulated — life-cycle evidence
- Accepted
- Sale agreements, completion statements, audited accounts, tax returns
- Not accepted
- 'Savings', 'family money', a bank balance with no history
- Scope
- Every beneficial owner, not only the applicant
- Timing
- Begin collecting before you approach a bank
Where the time goes
The file
What to put in front of them.
- Separate the two questions on paperWrite out where the money entering the account comes from, and separately how each owner came to have wealth. They need different documents.
- Work backwards through the careerEmployment, business ownership, disposals, inheritance. Identify what evidences each and who holds it.
- Request documents from former advisers earlyAccountants, lawyers and registries in other countries operate on their own timetable and some will need authority to release.
- Get translations and attestations where neededA document a compliance officer cannot read is a document that will be queried.
- Present it as a narrative with exhibitsNot a folder. A two-page account with numbered attachments answers the question in the form the officer has to write it up.
Related
Questions
Documentary evidence tracing the money to a lawful origin — a sale agreement, audited accounts, a completion statement, tax filings. A bank balance alone is not proof of origin.
Because anti-money-laundering obligations require them to understand the customer, not just the transaction. Wealth accumulated elsewhere is still wealth entering their institution.
Often, because the documents belong to an estate rather than to you. A grant of probate or its equivalent, plus the estate accounts, is the usual answer.
Every ultimate beneficial owner, yes. A minority shareholder who cannot or will not provide it can stop the whole application.
One question
Where will the money actually come from?
Then the account is a cross-border file, and the compliance question is which countries and in which currencies. Name the corridors in the application rather than waiting to be asked — an unexplained payment from a jurisdiction the bank did not expect is what freezes accounts in month three.
What the file has to containOr just ask usThen substance is the question rather than geography. A local trading history, an Ejari and a customer list make this straightforward; a flexi-desk with no domestic contracts yet is where onboarding slows, and the fix is evidence rather than a different bank.
Why applications get declinedOr just ask usThen source of wealth carries the file, and 'savings' is not an answer. A share sale agreement, a property disposal, audited accounts from an overseas company or a series of tax returns are. Assemble that before the first meeting, not after the first question.
Evidencing source of fundsOr just ask us