We Know Our Customer

The law requires banks to know their customers. We must comply with the Know Your Customer principle. We act in your best interests when we follow this principle and request data from customers. We want to be a reliable partner to you. In order to maintain the best client relationship, it’s important for your data at the bank to always be up to date, and the bank will also request additional information about specific transactions if necessary.

The Know Your Customer principle proceeds from the following legal provisions:

• Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act
• Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act (in English)
• Credit Institutions Act
• Tax Information Exchange Act
• Personal Data Protection Act

In addition to an effective identity document and contact details, the bank asks each client to provide additional information, such as:

• tax residency
• area of activity
• estimated monthly income to the account in Coop Pank and the nature of the income (salary, dividends, rental income)

The TEKSA database is based on the draft approved by the Ministry of Finance on 4 November 2021. The establishment of the TEKSA database is linked to the Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purpose of money laundering or terrorist financing. The establishment of the database will ensure the systematic reporting and disclosure of data of beneficial owners and increase the transparency of the Estonian business environment.

The obligation to submit information on beneficial owners via the Commercial Register’s information system entered into force for companies back in October 2018, but there were no legal provisions on the basis of which the Registration Department could inform the person who failed to submit data of their obligation and demand the submission of data.

See guidelines for identification of a beneficial owners here.

What will change from 7 March 2022?

Financial institutions will be obliged to check on an ongoing basis the consistency of the beneficiaries submitted to the bank with the TEKSA database and, if a discrepancy is found, to ask companies to check which databases are not updated and to correct them. If a company fails to do so, banks are obliged to file a discrepancy report with the keeper of the database. Previously, banks were obliged to check compliance with the commercial register, but there was no obligation to report discrepancies.

In order to avoid any misunderstandings in companies, it is important to provide the bank with verified and accurate information and, if the information of the beneficiaries changes, both the Commercial Register and the bank must be informed as soon as possible!

All banks check and have the right and obligation to check the origin of the assets of their customers pursuant to the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act. The bank is obliged to understand how the client has earned the existing assets, and, in certain situations, the origin of the assets used in a specific transaction. When you receive the respective letter from the bank, the easiest thing to do is explain in your response to the bank how you became the owner of the money and, if possible, enclose the documents that prove this. Such documents may be a statement of your account in another bank, a purchase and sales contract, succession documents, loan agreements, etc.

You can update your data in our Internet bank or by visiting a branch of Coop Pank (you will find the locations of the branches here).

Sometimes, our data change. This is why we advise you to check your data as soon as they change or when the bank asks you to do so. This is the only way we can ensure that your important data are always up to date.

Coop Pank regards all data as confidential. We may transmit the data of our clients only in the cases stipulated by law.

We cannot provide the requested services to clients in certain cases if they haven’t given us enough information.