CH232300 - How to do a compliance check: information powers: financial institution notices: ensuring documents are not onerous to provide

A Financial Institution Notice (FIN) cannot be issued if you, with the agreement of the authorised officer, consider the request would be onerous to comply with, see CH23100.

If the authorised officer considers it a reasonable requirement to seek production of documents beyond those described at CH232200 (including, for example, paying-in slips, paid cheques, or records of the Financial Institution’s correspondence with the person) they can authorise including this in the FIN.

You should provide a draft schedule of documents sought, with your submission to the authorised officer, along with an explanation as to why these are reasonably required for your check, see CH21620.

The submission should include your considerations of why the request is not onerous, including any points where the financial institution may disagree. The authorised officer will be able to assist in determining whether types of documents and information requested are reasonably required.

Is your request onerous?

If you consider parts of the request could be onerous then discuss with the authorised officer. You may decide to remove these parts from the information and document request.

A request being time consuming does not necessarily mean that it is onerous. An onerous request would likely create a significant resource cost to the Financial Institution. Where a request is time consuming the Financial Institution can liaise with you to discuss this and you have the flexibility to extend the deadline.

You may find that some of the records you request may not be held centrally, or that they aren’t electronically searchable on the Financial Institution’s IT systems. If the Financial Institution brings this to your attention you should consider extending the deadline if they won’t be able to meet the usual time allowed of 30 days. This does not mean your request is onerous.

The activity of printing out and sending documents by post could be considered time consuming. It is recommended that, where possible, documents should be provided electronically. You can specify in the notice what form the documents and information must be provided in, see CH23380, although some Financial Institutions may not necessarily be able to provide documents and information in the form requested. You should try to be flexible where possible to accept the documents and information in the form that can be provided.

Although the above scenarios would not immediately be considered onerous, in practice the decision about whether documents and information are onerous to provide may vary depending on the size of the Financial Institution.

There are some examples of what might be considered onerous, or not, at CH232400.