Post by Admin on Apr 22, 2016 11:03:15 GMT 12
The following is a copy of an email I sent to the NZ Federation concerning an article in its April 2016 Justices' Quarterly.
I have just received the latest issue of the Justice Quarterly and read with concern your article in the training section of Journal on certifying documents. According to the article, when ID documents are for banks and financial institutions we must also identify the bearer of being the individual named in the document. The article further states that “The Federation receives regular complaints from banks that certified certified copies have not been completed correctly.” This is surprising to me as I understood, under the Anti-Money laundering and Countering of Terrorism Act 2014, the banks themselves must identify new clients and view clients actual IDs – not copies. After reading the article I contacted three of the major banks – ASB, ANZ and WESTPAC and the all confirmed that new clients must present themselves to a bank branch for ID purposes. Therefore when opening new accounts at banks certifying copies of IDs would not be required.
However I suspect most of the complaints that the Federation receive would be coming from money lending institution which do most of their business online and therefore use JPs as a free service to do the client identification for them. (One lending institution's document required the JP to also certify that the client had read and understood the terms of the loan agreement!).
The problem with instructions for trainers is that they offer no means of feedback from us JPs.
Where the client states that the document is for a financial institution the Justices' Quarterly suggest the following wording on the copy:
Certified true copy of ( identification document ) that represents the named individual (client's name ).
The law society suggests an alternative wording:
I certify this to be a true copy of the original, which I have sighted, and the photo represents a true likeness of [the person presenting the document to me for certification] [OR] [customer’s name].
I have just received the latest issue of the Justice Quarterly and read with concern your article in the training section of Journal on certifying documents. According to the article, when ID documents are for banks and financial institutions we must also identify the bearer of being the individual named in the document. The article further states that “The Federation receives regular complaints from banks that certified certified copies have not been completed correctly.” This is surprising to me as I understood, under the Anti-Money laundering and Countering of Terrorism Act 2014, the banks themselves must identify new clients and view clients actual IDs – not copies. After reading the article I contacted three of the major banks – ASB, ANZ and WESTPAC and the all confirmed that new clients must present themselves to a bank branch for ID purposes. Therefore when opening new accounts at banks certifying copies of IDs would not be required.
However I suspect most of the complaints that the Federation receive would be coming from money lending institution which do most of their business online and therefore use JPs as a free service to do the client identification for them. (One lending institution's document required the JP to also certify that the client had read and understood the terms of the loan agreement!).
The problem with instructions for trainers is that they offer no means of feedback from us JPs.
Where the client states that the document is for a financial institution the Justices' Quarterly suggest the following wording on the copy:
Certified true copy of ( identification document ) that represents the named individual (client's name ).
The law society suggests an alternative wording:
I certify this to be a true copy of the original, which I have sighted, and the photo represents a true likeness of [the person presenting the document to me for certification] [OR] [customer’s name].