At Pier Law, we aim to make our on-boarding process, and compliance with all required legislation as straightforward as possible.
All lawyers are required to comply with the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 and associated regulations.
Before we can start work on your behalf, we are required to confirm certain details about you or your business/entity. This process, known as customer due diligence (CDD), requires us to:
For individuals, we’ll need to verify your full name, date of birth, current address, and in some cases your tax residency status.
For companies or other legal entities, we will need to verify the full name, date of birth, and current address for all directors and shareholders together with the trading name of the company (if different), principal business address or registered office address, country of incorporation, company identifier or registration number, and the legal status and purpose.
For Trusts, we will need to verify the full name, date of birth, and current address for all Trustees, settlors, appointors, or anyone representing the Trust. In addition, we need a copy of the Trust Deed and any subsequent amendments, together with source of wealth for the Trust. The Source of Wealth relates to how the Trust obtained its assets.
We will provide detailed guidance around the required information we need from you during the on-boarding process.
Yes. We collect this information for all new work into the firm, regardless of whether you are a new client or an existing client.
For existing clients, if we already hold all the information we need from a previous instruction, we may not need anything further from you. However, if we do not hold sufficient information for you, we will request updated documentation or additional documentation that aligns with the current requirements when you next engage us.
We have adopted the Act’s CDD requirements for all clients to the firm when they instruct us on a matter that is a captured activity under the Act. As such, for some matters you instruct us on we will request this information, and others we will not.
As per the Act’s requirements, we must collect this information from you before we can act for you on the matter you are instructing us for.
After you engage us, we will send you detailed instructions on the information we need from you and how you can provide this information to us.
In most cases, we use an electronic verification system where you can complete your identity verification and supply any other required information via a secure web portal accessible either through a computer or mobile device.
Alternatively, you can provide the required information to us in person at any of our three offices, or if you are not able to visit our office, we can accept a certified copy of the original documents. Please contact us for instructions around this, and who can certify documents for you.
If you have any questions or aren’t sure about something, the team member handling your work is always happy to help. Just give us a call or send us an email, and we will walk you through the process.
