What are anti-money laundering and know your customer checks?

As an FCA regulated and authorised business, it is necessary that we perform certain Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Customer checks to verify your identity and prevent money laundering. For this reason, we ask every lender to upload a proof of identity (we can accept a valid passport or driving licence) and a proof of address (we can accept a council tax bill, utility bill or bank statement). We are partnered with a third-party provider who perform electronic checks against certain watchlists also.
For this reason, lenders are only able to pledge and open an IFISA account once these checks have been passed.