What Is Source of Wealth? How to Prove It to a Bank
When a bank asks for your source of wealth, a tax return or bank statement may not be enough. Learn what banks actually look for, why international wealth can be harder to document, and how to build a clear paper trail that stands up to enhanced due diligence.
Transcript excerpt
Your bank just asked you to prove your source of wealth. And this might feel like an accusation now, but it's actually a very standard process at regulated banks out there. The uncomfortable part though is that in my experience, often applicants actually get rejected even though they have legitimate source of funds because they're not prepared well. Even a clean tax return or a valid bank statement cannot be enough on its own sometimes. So, in the next few minutes, I'll actually explain you what the bank really is checking for and how you can give them the proof that they can actually verify. So when a bank asks you for source of wealth, they typically want to understand where the money is coming from in simple terms. So they want to understand all your earnings from earlier years and obviously how are you currently doing in order to understand that the money that you want to deposit into the bank where it originates from and how you've earned it and if you've declared it everywhere properly. And the story about that obviously depends on you, right? It can be that you've had a profitable business for a few years. It can be that you sold a house, that you received dividends from an investment that you make, or you just had like a larger investment return on it. All of these things are valid, but you need to be very clear on how that money actually originated, and you need to be able to prove it as well.
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