Your bank is not accusing you of anything. A source of funds request is a standard compliance procedure that banks run on certain international transfers, and it happens to legitimate customers every day. It does not mean your money is suspected of being illegal. It means your transfer triggered an automated review threshold and a compliance officer now needs to verify the origin of the funds before releasing the payment.
This is a legal requirement, not a bank policy choice. Governments around the world, including Nigeria's Central Bank, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority, and the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, require banks to verify where large or unusual sums of money come from before processing international transfers. Banks that skip this check face enormous regulatory fines. So when they ask, they genuinely have no choice.
The good news is that for anyone with a legitimate source of funds, this is a documentation exercise, not a barrier. You provide what they ask for, they review it, and the transfer proceeds. Most source of funds reviews resolve within two to five business days once you submit the right documents.
Why This Happens
Source of funds requests are triggered by specific conditions in a bank's compliance system. These are the most common:
- Transaction amount thresholds. Most banks automatically escalate transactions above a set threshold for enhanced due diligence. In many jurisdictions this threshold sits around the equivalent of $10,000, but banks can set their own internal limits lower than the regulatory minimum.
- Significant departure from your usual transaction pattern. If you normally send small amounts and suddenly initiate a large transfer, the bank's system flags it as anomalous. The same applies if you send to a new country, a new recipient, or at an unusual frequency.
- High-risk destination country. Nigeria appears on FATF's list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring. Transfers originating from or going to high-risk countries receive additional scrutiny at almost every international bank, regardless of the amount.
- New customer or thin transaction history. Banks with limited history on your account have less data to assess your transaction against. Less history means a lower threshold for triggering enhanced due diligence.
- Correspondent bank request. Sometimes the source of funds request does not originate with your bank. A correspondent bank further in the payment chain may have flagged the transaction and relayed the request back to your bank to handle.
- Cash deposits preceding the transfer. If the funds transferred into your account before you initiated the international payment arrived as cash, your bank may ask you to explain the origin of that cash specifically. Cash is harder to trace and attracts higher scrutiny.
- Business account sending personal-looking transfers, or vice versa. A mismatch between account type and transaction nature, such as a personal account sending what looks like a business payment, can trigger a manual review.
- Politically exposed persons or proximity to them. If your name, employer, or business association places you adjacent to a politically exposed person (a government official, senior executive of a state-owned entity, or close family member of either), enhanced due diligence applies as a matter of regulation.
- Unusual payment reference or purpose. If the transfer reference is vague, missing, or inconsistent with the declared purpose, compliance teams flag it for manual review before processing.
What Happens to Your Money
The transfer is on hold. Not cancelled, not returned. On hold.
Your bank has paused the payment while the review is active. The funds are sitting in your account or in a compliance queue at your bank. They have not entered the correspondent banking network yet in most cases, which is actually the best position to be in. The payment is fully reversible at this stage if you decide not to proceed, and there are no fees for a transfer that has not yet been sent.
If the transfer was already in the network when the review was triggered, which can happen when a correspondent bank flags it mid-route, the funds are held at that correspondent bank. They are still in the system and still traceable. They are not lost.
Once you provide the required documentation and the compliance team clears the review, the transfer proceeds as originally instructed. The processing time resets from the point of clearance, so add the review period to your original expected delivery timeline.
If you do not respond to the source of funds request within the bank's specified window, typically ten to thirty days depending on the institution, the transfer is cancelled and the funds are returned to your account. You will not lose the money, but you will need to start over and likely face the same review again without the right documentation.
No additional fees are charged for the review itself in most cases. If the transfer eventually proceeds, you pay only the original transfer fees.
What to Do Now
- Read the bank's request carefully. The bank's message or letter should specify exactly what documents they need. Do not guess. Source of funds requests are specific: they may ask for payslips, business financials, a sale agreement, inheritance documents, or a loan certificate, depending on what they have assessed as the likely origin of the funds.
- Gather your documentation based on the source of the money. The document you need matches where the money actually came from:
- Salary or employment income: Recent payslips (typically three months), an employment letter confirming your salary, and bank statements showing the salary credits.
- Business income: Audited accounts, recent management accounts, or business bank statements showing the trading income.
- Property sale: A signed sale agreement, completion statement, or solicitor's letter confirming the sale proceeds.
- Investment proceeds: A broker statement or investment account statement showing the withdrawal or dividend payment. Account statements from your Meristem or ARM Securities brokerage account work well for this.
- Inheritance or gift: A will, grant of probate, or a signed gift letter with supporting identity documents from the donor.
- Loan or credit facility: A signed loan agreement and bank statement showing the credit to your account.
- Submit everything at once. Banks process source of funds reviews faster when all documentation is submitted in a single package rather than piece by piece. If you have three months of payslips and a letter, send them all together. Back-and-forth document requests add days each time.
- Include a brief cover letter. A short, clear explanation in your own words of where the funds came from, what the transfer is for, and who the recipient is helps the compliance officer process the review faster. Keep it factual. One page is enough.
- Confirm receipt and ask for a timeline. After submitting your documents, follow up to confirm the bank received them and ask how long the review will take. Get a specific number of business days, not a vague "as soon as possible."
- Follow up at the midpoint. If they say five business days, follow up after three. If they say ten, follow up after five. Compliance teams handle large volumes and a proactive follow-up keeps your case visible without being disruptive.
- Escalate if the review runs beyond fifteen business days with no resolution. Ask to speak with the compliance team supervisor and request a formal case reference number. If you still receive no resolution after twenty-one business days, file a complaint with your bank's complaints department. In Nigeria, unresolved complaints can be escalated to the Central Bank of Nigeria's Consumer Protection Department.
- Do not initiate a second transfer for the same amount while the first is under review. Sending the same payment again while the first is in compliance review creates a duplicate transaction that compounds the problem and may trigger additional flags.
How to Avoid This Next Time
Maintain complete documentation for large fund movements before you transfer. If you are planning to make a large international transfer using money from a salary bonus, a property sale, or an investment liquidation, gather the supporting documents at the time the money arrives in your account, not after your bank asks for them. Having a payslip, sale agreement, or broker statement already on file lets you respond to any future request within hours rather than days.
Write a specific and accurate payment purpose on every transfer. Vague references like "personal" or "business payment" are the most common triggers for enhanced due diligence on otherwise clean transactions. Write something specific: "School fees payment, September 2025 intake, University of Edinburgh" or "Rent payment, month of October 2025, landlord John Smith." The more specific your stated purpose, the easier it is for compliance systems to categorise the transfer automatically without escalating it to a manual review.
Verify recipient details completely before sending so the transfer does not stall for other reasons on top of a compliance review. A transfer that has both a compliance hold and a detail error takes significantly longer to resolve. Before any international payment, validate the recipient's IBAN using the IBAN validator on AbokiCalculator and confirm the BIC is active using the SWIFT lookup tool. A clean transfer instruction moves through the compliance review faster because the bank only has one thing to assess.
