IEIM402510 - Due Diligence: General Requirements: Notifying Account Holders

Due Diligence: General Requirements: Notifying Account Holders

In accordance with regulation 10 of the 2015 Regulations there is a requirement for reporting Financial Institutions to notify each individual Reportable Person or individual Specified U.S. Person that information relating to that person which is required to be reported under regulation 6 will be reported to HMRC and may be transferred to the government of another territory in accordance with a relevant agreement. The notification must be made by 31 January in the calendar year following the first year in which the account held by the individual is a Reportable Account maintained by the Reporting Financial Institution (for example – if an account is first identified as a Reportable Account for the 2019 calendar year then the customer must be notified by 31 January 2020). This requirement is intended to provide good time for the notification to be provided to customers ahead of their data being sent to HMRC (in principle, a Financial Institution may send its report for the preceding calendar year to HMRC at any time after 1 January but in practice and based on FATCA reporting very few report substantially earlier than 31 May).

The notification may be made either in a direct communication to the Account Holder, such as a monthly or annual account statement, or by way of general communications such as updates to terms and conditions, and in either case may be made electronically or by paper communication. It may also be included in the self-certification or account opening documentation. Note that this is a ‘one-off’ requirement and there is no requirement to repeat the process once completed for a particular account.