Yes. Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) are mandatory regulatory requirements that require anyone within the financial services industry to check for customer identity and complete customer due diligence on customers. KYC is generally used when speaking about individuals and KYB is used for businesses.
These checks occur initially when you register with Kota. Yet, we will complete ongoing reviews of all clients and may follow up with you if additional information or documentation is required.
What information does Kota require?
What information does Kota require?
When you sign up, you will be required to provide certain information for Kota to complete KYC/KYB checks. This information includes:
Company Details
Corporate and Company Registration details
Directors Information
Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBO) information
Kota is required to verify this information and will do so against official companies' registers and government sources. Although we'll attempt to verify all of this information against official registers, we may be required to request you to provide additional documentation if we cannot verify the information independently. This might include:
Company documentation
Certificate of Incorporation
Memorandum and Articles of Association
Financial accounts
Registration Details
Details on the official company register
Regulatory details (if applicable)
Directors Information
List of Directors
Directors ID information and address document
Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBO) information
UBO Declaration
UBO ID information and address document
If we require additional information, our Customer Success Team will contact you and will provide any clarifications you need.
What are Politically Exposed Persons (PEP)?
What are Politically Exposed Persons (PEP)?
In a nutshell, a PEP is an individual that holds a prominent public position or function. If your company has a PEP as a director or UBO, then additional due diligence will be required.
What are Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs)?
What are Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs)?
Beneficial owners will ordinarily include the individuals who ultimately own or control a legal entity, either through direct or indirect ownership of a sufficient percentage of the shares or voting rights or ownership interest in the entity, including through bearer shareholdings, or control via other means. More details on this can be found here.
Kota is required to identify who the UBOs of your company are. We can do this in some cases through the official register of beneficial owners but in a lot of cases, we may need to ask you for an official declaration, confirming the names of the UBOs. A member of Kota's Customer Success team will provide you with clarification as to acceptable documents to show who your UBOs are.
What is Source of Fund (SoF)?
What is Source of Fund (SoF)?
SoF refers to the origin and method of the transfer of funds to Kota. Kota needs to understand where the origin of the funds come from to pay for Kota services. Kota may ask you follow up questions or stop payments if we are not satisfied that we understand the SOF.
Does Kota accept third party payments?
Does Kota accept third party payments?
Kota generally does not accept payments from third parties and will query with you if you use a third party for your Billing Entity. If the third party is a related entity, Kota may be required to complete KYC checks on that entity too.