By Legal Futures’ Associate SearchFlow
SearchFlow – the UK’s leading provider of search solutions and legal reports – is urging property lawyers to make Anti-Money Laundering searches an automatic step of the due diligence process, in a bid to help combat related risks in the property transaction process.
Following an article in this weekend’s Daily Mail, which reported how the authorities are “stretched to breaking point by a barrage of new deadly threats” and suggested that lawyers, accountants and estate agents could be doing more to report suspicious activities.
Security Minister Ben Wallace was reported as saying that the UK is “..under assault from all types of enemy – sophisticated cyber criminals, organised crime bosses, terrorists and hostile states – relentlessly picking away at us, targeting us and using all the facilities that the 21st Century has to offer to attack our values and our people.”
Confirms Tracy Burtwell, Sales Director of SearchFlow, “Today, the threat from money laundering and associated cybercrimes is something lawyers are acutely aware of. We want to provide assurances that conducting ID checks to validate identity is as easy as ordering search reports and therefore shouldn’t be overlooked on any client instruction. Within our ordering platform, lawyers simply add the searches to their order menu and the results are returned in a matter of minutes.”
SearchFlow provides a range of Anti-Money Laundering products to suit a range of requirements for property lawyers, including ID Check, Foreign National Search and an Anti-Money Laundering Report, which scrutinises an enhanced range of data sets to accurately validate identity, including access to the largest database of identity verified consented records in the UK, Consent ID.
This also includes identity document checks (including UK passport and driving licence), mortality records, full electoral roll, sanctions and enforcements, enhanced measures for local Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) (no longer limited to persons outside the UK), Births Index and Call ID (Money Laundering).
SearchFlow is hosting a free CPD event to provide property lawyers, conveyancers and legal secretaries with guidance on Anti-Money Laundering (AML), cybersecurity and emerging technologies.
The event, which is taking place on Tuesday 18th June at Manchester’s Hilton Deansgate, brings together industry experts including Richard Hinton from Pitsford Consulting who will cover conveyancing market intelligence and how data and related datasets can be used to create new business opportunities for firms.
Kris Clark from Landmark Information Group will talk about emerging technologies in the conveyancing process, while Tom Lyes from LawyerChecker will discuss how to defend firms from the threat of cybercrime and fraud.
There will also be a dedicated focus on Anti Money Laundering, where representatives from SearchFlow will discuss mitigating risk and protecting home-buying and selling clients.
To register for the CPD event, visit: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/emerging-technologies-conveyancing-tickets-61863861475.
With more than one million conveyancing searches and legal reports run every year for over 2,000 legal clients across England and Wales, SearchFlow is regarded as one of the leading providers of comprehensive searches, surveys, identity checks and conveyancing insurance solutions and prides itself in working in partnership with its clients to provide solutions that enable competitive advantage.
For more information on SearchFlow, call 0870 423 2922, email sales@searchflow.co.uk or visit www.searchflow.co.uk.
