Terms of Engagement
1. Who we are and what this document is
The Source of Funds Company is a trading name of Complex Legal Limited, a company registered in England & Wales (company number 10066369) with its registered office at Charter Buildings, 9 Ashton Lane, Sale, Cheshire M33 6WT. VAT registration no. GB 236 5282 05. In these terms, “we”, “us” and “our” mean Complex Legal Limited trading as The Source of Funds Company, and “you” means the person instructing us and paying our fee.
These are the terms on which we provide our source of funds checking service. They form a contract between you and us when you pay our fee. Please read them before paying — you will be asked to confirm you accept them as part of the payment process.
We are not a law firm, we are not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority or the Financial Conduct Authority, and we do not provide legal or financial advice. Contact: enquiries@sourceoffundscompany.com · 0161 706 0800 · sourceoffundscompany.com.
2. Who our client is
You are our client. Your solicitor may have recommended us to you, but your solicitor is not our client, does not instruct us on your matter, and pays us nothing. No fee, commission or other payment passes between us and any law firm in either direction. Our contract is with you alone.
3. The service
Our service is to:
- contact you to identify how your property purchase is being funded;
- tell you what evidence of the source of your funds is needed for your circumstances, and how to provide it to us;
- gather and review that evidence with you;
- prepare a clear source of funds report presenting that evidence; and
- send the report to the law firm acting for you on your purchase, with a copy to you.
What the service is not. We collect, organise and present evidence. We do not decide whether your source of funds is acceptable — that decision belongs to your law firm, which makes its own assessment under its own legal obligations. Our report is not legal advice, is not an audit, and is not a guarantee that your purchase will proceed or that your law firm will be satisfied.
4. Our fee
Our fee is £60 including VAT (£50 plus VAT), payable once, in advance, through the payment page on our website. Paying the fee and accepting these terms is how you instruct us. The fee covers the full standard service described in clause 3, and there is nothing further to pay us for that service.
5. If your circumstances require enhanced checks
In rare cases, the money laundering regulations require a deeper level of checking (known as enhanced due diligence) which goes beyond the standard service. If this applies to you:
- we will tell you as soon as we identify it, normally on our first call;
- we will give you a fixed written quote for the work actually required, with your £60 counted towards it; and
- if you prefer not to proceed, we will instead refund your £60 in full.
We will not carry out, or charge for, any work beyond the standard service without your agreement in advance. You cannot lose your fee under this clause: it is either counted towards the quoted work or refunded in full.
This clause does not apply where the need for enhanced checks arises because we are unable to satisfy ourselves that evidence provided to us is genuine. Clause 8 applies to that situation instead, and no refund is due under it.
If you agree to our revised fee quote for enhanced due diligence you must pay the amount due before we commence work.
6. When we start, and your right to cancel
As a consumer buying a service at a distance, you have a legal right to cancel this contract within 14 days of entering into it (the “cooling-off period”) under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013.
Property purchases rarely allow time to wait. By accepting these terms you expressly request that we begin work immediately, without waiting for the cooling-off period to end. You acknowledge that once the service has been fully performed — that is, once your report has been sent to your law firm — you lose the right to cancel.
If you cancel before we have begun substantive work on your case, we will refund your fee in full. Once substantive work has begun, the fee has been earned and clause 8 explains what happens to it. Clause 8 also continues to apply to information and documents you provided before cancellation. To cancel, email or telephone us using the contact details in clause 1; you may use the model cancellation form at the end of these terms but do not have to.
7. What we need from you
You agree to:
- give us information that is accurate, complete and truthful;
- provide the evidence we ask for promptly — delays in providing evidence become delays in your report; and
- tell us promptly if your funding arrangements change after you instruct us;
- send us documents by email where you can (for bank statements, the PDF downloaded from your bank’s app or website), and if you cannot, hand paper copies to your law firm, which may pass them to us at your request. We do not accept documents by post; and
- send the money for your purchase to your law firm from no more than two accounts. Where you intend to use three or more accounts we will ask you to consolidate them first, and if you do not we may be unable to complete the service.
We prepare your report in reliance on what you provide. We are not responsible for the consequences of information that is inaccurate, incomplete or untrue, and if we conclude that we cannot properly prepare a report, clause 8 applies.
8. Openness with your solicitor — and when we cannot complete the service
Our service only works because we work openly with the law firm acting for you. By instructing us you agree that we may disclose to your law firm any information, documents, facts, circumstances or concerns relating to your source of funds, without seeking your further consent. This permission survives cancellation or the ending of our engagement, however it ends.
Sometimes we cannot complete the service — for example, where we are unable to satisfy ourselves that evidence provided to us is genuine, or cannot obtain the information or explanations we need. If that happens:
- we will tell your law firm first, and may do so before we tell you;
- we will tell you that we are unable to complete the service and will not be producing a report;
- we will pass the information and documents you provided, together with our reasons for not producing a report, to your law firm; and
- we will not enter into discussion about those reasons with you.
Our reasons will be confined to facts and to what we were and were not able to verify. As clause 3 explains, we do not decide anything about your purchase: what happens next is between you and your law firm.
The fee is earned once we begin substantive work on your case. If we end the engagement under this clause, no refund is due.
9. How we work
A named member of our team will take your case and remain your point of contact through to your report. We work by telephone and email, and we do not take documents by post (see clause 7). We read and reconcile the documents you send us against your answers and each other; we do not run forensic checks on documents unless our authentication policy requires it, and if we do we will say so in your report. We aim to make first contact within one working day of your instruction, and to deliver your report within 3 business days of receiving the last piece of evidence we need.
10. Your documents and data
Once your report has been sent to your law firm, we delete your documents and information from our systems. We keep no copy of your evidence or report. Your law firm holds the report on its file. If we end the engagement without producing a report, the material you provided goes to your law firm under clause 8 and is then deleted from our systems in the same way. We retain only the records of your payment and of our engagement with you (including, where we end the engagement without a report, our internal record of that decision) that we keep for accounting, tax and record-keeping purposes.
Full details of how we handle your personal data, and your rights, are in our Privacy Notice, which forms part of these terms.
Where you provide us with an email address for sending material to, we will assume, unless you tell us otherwise, that your arrangements are sufficiently secure and confidential to protect your interests. The internet is not secure and there are risks if you send sensitive information to us by email. Data we send by email is not routinely encrypted, so please tell us if you do not want us to use email as a form of communication with you or if you require data to be encrypted. Email will be treated as written correspondence and we are entitled to assume that the purported sender of an email is the actual sender and that any express or implied approval or authority referred to in an email has been validly given. You consent to our email systems monitoring and scanning email correspondence between you and us for security purposes.
We will take reasonable steps to protect the integrity of our computer systems by screening for viruses on email sent or received. We expect you to do the same for your computer systems.
11. Our liability to you
Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited by law. Your statutory rights as a consumer, including under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, are not affected.
Subject to that, our total liability to you in connection with the service is limited to £1,000. We are not liable for losses that are not a foreseeable result of our breaking this contract, nor for delay or failure in your property transaction itself — including where your law firm declines to rely on the evidence presented, requires further checks, or reaches its own view on your source of funds.
12. Complaints and independent dispute resolution
If you are unhappy with our service, tell us first: complaints@sourceoffundscompany.com or 0161 706 0800. We will acknowledge your complaint within 2 business days and respond substantively within 10 business days.
If we cannot resolve your complaint between us, you may refer the dispute to the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR), an independent alternative dispute resolution body approved by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (cedr.com/consumer). We are willing to engage in dispute resolution through CEDR. Using this service is optional for you, and it does not affect your legal rights or your right to bring a claim in court instead. We are not covered by a statutory ombudsman scheme.
13. General
- These terms and our Privacy Notice are the entire agreement between us for the service.
- Only you and we have rights under this contract; no one else (including your law firm) may enforce it.
- If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest remains in force.
- We may update these terms from time to time; the version you accepted at payment is the version that applies to you.
- These terms are governed by the law of England & Wales, and the courts of England & Wales have jurisdiction (if you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you may also bring proceedings there).
Model cancellation form
To: The Source of Funds Company (a trading name of Complex Legal Limited), enquiries@sourceoffundscompany.com
I hereby give notice that I cancel my contract for the supply of the source of funds checking service.
Ordered on [date] · Name of consumer · Address of consumer · Signature (only if this form is notified on paper) · Date