Confirmation of Payee (CoP)

In order to tackle the high levels of fraud around UK payments a new Confirmation of Payee (CoP) service is going to be introduced to give customers greater assurance that they are sending their payments to the intended recipient. The service is effectively an ‘account name’ checking service which will reduce payments being misdirected due to errors or fraud.

To the public this may appear to be something fairly simple for the banks to set-up as a check whenever a new payee is created, but as anyone who has worked in a bank knows, there are many situations where the situation is far more complicated than it seems:

• Spelling differences (Anne/Ann, Stuart/Stewart, Steven/Stephen)
• Shortened names (Rob/Robert, Tom/Thomas, Henry/Harry, Bill/William)
• Use of middle name or preferred name instead of first name
• Nicknames
• Truncated names (particularly companies & charities)
• Maiden names
• Previous names of companies
• Trading as names
• Acronyms

There are two capabilities that need to be developed by all banks that provide payment services to their customers:

1. The capability that whenever a new payee is setup in order to make a payment, the payee name is checked with the account holding bank (an Account Servicing Payment Service Provider or ASPSP in the new terminology). This will result in a ‘Yes – It’s a Match, No – It’s not a Match or ‘No – It’s a close Match’ which will be shown to the customer.
2. The capability to service the incoming requests from Payment Service Providers (PSP) wishing to check one of your customer’s details. There are rules around the matching, what information is provided, and the same result options shown above will need to be passed back.

Fairmort has been looking at these requirements and we see that two of our existing solutions can provide banks with the capability to meet these requirements:

1. Fast-Fuse - Our Fast-Fuse integration solution can service both incoming and outgoing CoP requests, in the case of incoming CoP requests it will either talk directly to the core banking system, talk to the WILF Reporting (WILFr) data warehouse, or talk to both systems to process the necessary matching logic. In the case of out-going requests the Fast-Fuse solution can deal with requests from whatever channels or systems the bank has in place that require the CoP capability.
2. WILFr Data Warehouse - Our WILFr data warehouse can provide a data repository for the data needed to service incoming CoP requests as well as the matching logic. Clearly some or all of this data will be populated from the core banking system, but alias data can be held in WILFr if it is not easily maintained in the core banking system. Using the WILFr data warehouse to service these requests will provide banks with a cost-effective solution to the CoP requirement without making changes or upgrades to the core banking system which may be complex, expensive or not even possible in the case of older systems.

AEOI Reportable Jurisdictions

HMRC has finalised the list of AEOI reportable jurisdictions for the tax year of 2018. This means that the lists configured in the latest releases of WILFr AEOI module are now out of date, and will need to be updated, since some jurisdictions have been added, and others removed. Without these changes, the wrong jurisdictions will be included in the 2018 AEOI submission, due in May 2019. Whilst it is possible for WILFr AEOI users to update the jurisdictions within the WILFr AEOI module configuration screens, there will be a lot of updates to make following HMRC’s notification, so Fairmort will be releasing a patch with these changes to all WILFr AEOI users before the May 2019 submission.

Changes since last year's submission:

The following jurisdictions are now reportable for the May 2019 submission:

• Antigua and Barbuda
• Brunei Darussalam
• Costa Rica
• Macao (China)
• Nigeria
• Vanuatu

The following jurisdiction is no longer reportable for the May 2019 Submission:

• Russia

The following are reportable jurisdictions for the 2019 reporting year, in respect of 2018 reportable accounts:

Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Croatia, Curacao, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guernsey, Hong Kong (China), Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jersey, Korea, Latvia, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macao (China), Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Monaco, Montserrat, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Niue, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Samoa, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Singapore, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Uruguay, Vanuatu.

Source: https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/international-exchange-of-information/ieim402340

Regulatory Updates

To ensure our software is compliant with the latest regulations we proactively research regulatory changes monthly. These changes may have an impact on your business. Along with the AEOI update taken from the HMRC website, this edition includes an update on the Continuity of Access waiver and the regularly featured PRA tracker.