Know Your Customer (KYC)

You are supporting us to fulfil our obligation under The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017, by ensuring we have the most up-to-date information and documentation for our customers.

From time to time, we will ask our customers to update and validate the information that we hold about their organisation. By having a strong understanding of what your organisation does, where you do it, who you operate with and who benefits from your organisation, Unity is much better equipped to detect and deter criminals who want to defraud you, launder money, breach sanctions or evade taxes.

We provide a period of 3 months to conduct the review and we will make it as easy as possible for you to complete. If we are unable to meet our regulatory requirement to update our records by the due date, we will close your account(s).

Yes, if we reach out to request a KYC review, you must complete it otherwise you will lose access to your account(s) with us. All financial institutions in the UK must adhere to the regulations as prescribed in The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017. The regulations are in place to protect you and prevent money laundering and other financial crimes. Unfortunately, if we are unable to obtain accurate and up-to-date information to update our records, as a last resort, we will close your account(s).

We will reach out to you via email to provide further details and let you know when the KYC review for your organisation is due.

Our KYC Portal is designed to allow you to securely provide information to update our records. The information required to complete the review will be displayed when you log into the KYC Portal. It would be useful to have some information to hand, such as details of:
• Directors, trustees, and linked individuals
• Current signatories
• Ownership structure and who benefits from your organisation
• The nature and activity of your organisation

You may need to upload recent copies of some documentation. This will be shown in the “Upload documents for your organisation” section of the KYC Portal.

To prove your identity, log into the portal and click ‘Upload ID’ next to the relevant signatory. You’ll need to upload one photo ID that includes your full name and photo e.g. a passport or driving license, and one proof of address that includes your full name and current address e.g. a utility bill. Once uploaded, click ‘I’m finished’ to complete the process.

Yes. Simply close your browser session. Any information you have entered will be saved automatically and you will be emailed a link to allow you to return to the KYC Portal and complete your review.

We’ll use all information to protect you, and ourselves, from financial crime. We take our obligation to protect your data very seriously. All the information you provide will be subject to our Data Protection Policy and stored for Know Your Customer (KYC) purposes only and your information will not be passed to any third parties for marketing purposes, but may be passed to fraud prevention agencies. You can read more in our privacy statement at: www.unity.co.uk/privacy-statement.

To tell us that a person should no longer be linked to your account(s), simply click the ‘Remove’ button next to their name within the KYC Portal. Once confirmed, our KYC analyst will update your records accordingly.

To add a signatory to your account, please use our account management form.

To remove an existing signatory, please use our account management form.

We accept the following file formats: .pdf, .docx, .jpg, and .png. Please ensure your documents are submitted in one of these formats to avoid any processing delays. Files must be 4MB or less in size.

You can upload documents on their behalf. Signatories do not need to upload their own documents.

If your uploaded document is rejected, a member of our team will contact you directly to explain the reason and guide you on the next steps, including which alternative documents will be accepted.

Yes. Unity Trust Bank ensures data protection through Data Privacy Impact Assessments (DPIA) which safeguards data privacy, security, quality and compliance with UK GDPR & PECR. This is mandatory for all processing and identifies the data assets, the data retention and where high-risk processing or special category of data is used, a DPIA is performed. We also employ a number of security tools and services to ensure the confidentiality, security and availability of ours and our customers data.

We will reach out to you when it is time to complete a KYC review. In the meantime, you can notify us of any changes to your organisation by using our account management form.