Using Open Banking and Data Technologies to prevent money-laundering in the UK property market

利用开放银行和数据技术防止英国房地产市场的洗钱活动

• 批准号: 47241
• 金额: $ 46.11万
• 依托单位: THIRDFORT LIMITED
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Study
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=47241
• 关键词: Using; Open; Banking; Data; Technologies

UK property is increasingly becoming the 'money-laundry' of choice for the world's criminals _(BBC-Panorama-'Following-the-drug-money'-2019)_. Transparency International pinpointed £4.4billion of UK properties bought with laundered funds, a sum it said was "the tip of the iceberg"_(Financial-Times-2019)_.Property provides a safe harbour for fraudsters to integrate large sums of 'dirty money' into the legal economy in a single transaction, fuelling crime throughout the UK and internationally. Consequently, regulators have ramped up oversight and pressure on property professionals (lawyers/estate-agents/mortgage-brokers/mortgage-lenders) leading to slower property transaction times and worsened experiences for professionals and homemovers.The gatekeepers to prevent money-laundering in property are property-lawyers. Money-laundering regulations require them to combat money-laundering by completing detailed and costly checks to confirm homemovers' identities and sources of wealth/funds.These checks are performed manually, which is slow (20-days), costly (£150) and ineffective. Lawyers spend £150 of time collecting ID-documents, bank statements and supportive evidence from homemovers, then assessing them to establish if they are using non-laundered purchase funds. This is very difficult to do smoothly and accurately.With no technological solution, property-lawyers have no alternative other than to throw more manual processes at preventing money-laundering. These processes are ineffective at stopping money-laundering because falsifying any document is easy to do and hard for the untrained eye to detect. Frustratingly for the homemover, manual information gathering cannot be securely shared with others who need it, such as estate-agents, mortgage-brokers and mortgage-lenders, meaning they must have their financial affairs assessed from scratch multiple times.Thirdfort is changing this. After a friend was defrauded out of £25k during a property purchase and having been through painful anti-money-laundering ("AML") checks multiple times, co-founders Jack and Olly set up Thirdfort to streamline identity and AML-checks in UK property. Thirdfort has built a mobile-app to automate ID-checks using electronic verification and will now automate these painful and manual money-laundering checks. Using Open-Banking technology, Thirdfort will enable instant access and analysis of bank statement data. A report is then generated for the property-lawyer to assess and share with estate-agents/mortgage-brokers/mortgage-lenders.Thirdfort will relieve property-professionals of the manual burden of collecting documents and provide a better, more accurate way to identify illegitimate funds. The checks can be done without the need for paper, empowering homemovers to carry out checks via their phone, speeding up property transaction times and reducing legal fees. This frees up lawyers to give better service and provides a robust tool for preventing UK property money-laundering.

英国房产正日益成为全球犯罪分子的“洗黑钱”之选（BBC-Panorama-“追踪毒品资金”-2019）。透明国际指出，44亿英镑的英国房产是用洗钱资金购买的，该组织称这只是“冰山一角”。房地产为欺诈者提供了一个安全港，他们可以通过一笔交易将大笔“脏钱”融入合法经济，从而助长了英国乃至全球的犯罪活动。因此，监管机构加大了对房地产专业人士（律师/房地产经纪人/抵押贷款经纪人/抵押贷款放贷人）的监管和压力，导致房地产交易时间放缓，专业人士和家庭主妇的体验恶化。防止财产洗钱的看门人是财产律师。洗钱条例要求他们通过完成详细和昂贵的检查来打击洗钱，以确认家庭主妇的身份和财富/资金来源。这些检查都是手动进行的，速度慢（20天），费用高（150英镑），而且效率低下。律师们花费150英镑的时间收集家庭主妇的身份证件、银行对账单和支持性证据，然后对其进行评估，以确定他们是否使用了未洗钱的购房资金。这是很难做到顺利和准确。在没有技术解决方案的情况下，财产律师别无选择，只能投入更多的人工程序来防止洗钱。这些程序在阻止洗钱方面是无效的，因为伪造任何文件都很容易，未经训练的人很难发现。让家庭主妇感到沮丧的是，手工收集的信息无法安全地与其他需要的人共享，比如房地产经纪人、抵押贷款经纪人和抵押贷款放款人，这意味着他们必须从头开始多次评估自己的财务状况。Thirdfort正在改变这一点。一位朋友在购买房产时被骗走了2.5万英镑，并经历了多次痛苦的反洗钱（AML）检查后，联合创始人杰克和奥利成立了Thirdfort，以简化英国房产的身份和反洗钱检查。Thirdfort开发了一款移动应用程序，通过电子验证自动检查身份，现在将自动执行这些痛苦的手动洗钱检查。使用开放式银行技术，Thirdfort将能够即时访问和分析银行对账单数据。然后生成一份报告，供房地产律师评估，并与房地产经纪人/抵押贷款经纪人/抵押贷款放款人分享。第三，将减轻财产专业人员收集文件的手工负担，并提供更好、更准确的方法来识别非法资金。这种检查不需要纸张，让家庭主妇可以通过手机进行检查，加快了房地产交易时间，降低了法律费用。这让律师可以腾出时间提供更好的服务，并为防止英国房地产洗钱提供了一个强有力的工具。