The fast-growing world of single family offices, multi family offices and targeted private client advisory firms has meant an increase in the number of intermediaries offering to help private clients spend their money.
Carrying out payment services is a regulated activity, and most intermediaries are not in fact regulated to provide payment services on a client's behalf. Some examples of where we assist private clients in managing their funds are set out here.
As property prices soar in super-prime London and the surrounding counties, we have seen a huge surge in the number of construction contracts being commissioned, particularly by sophisticated clients ('Employers') whose wealth and/or property is structured in trusts, or through offshore entities.
By far and away, the principle benefit of Project Bank Accounts is that as an Employer, your money is only used for your project. In the traditional main contracting scenario, you take a risk on the main contractor's creditworthiness, placing their funds in the general pool of contractor funds that can be used for any of the contractor's projects.
If a contractor has a 'disaster' project (perhaps unexpected challenges are met on site; perhaps another of their clients becomes sanctioned; perhaps another of their clients cannot pay for another reason), they will have to use their general funds to cover their costs and their own downstream contractual obligations to their supply chains on all of their projects ('pay when paid' having been outlawed in 1998). This means that even the most creditworthy, best-intentioned contractor might have a 'rainy day' that means suddenly their finances are stretched very thin.
By implementing a project bank account, however, your funds are only passed to the main contractor for their bit of the work - all of your specialist sub-contractors, suppliers, and even your consultant team can be paid directly from the Project Bank Account. If the absolute worst happens to your main contractor and they become insolvent, at least everyone underneath them in the supply chain has been paid up to date. That means you won't have to pay twice if you need to bring in a replacement main contractor.
Our probate and executor accounts are independent third-party managed accounts (TPMA's) opened in the name of the deceased's estate and held securely at the Bank of England while the executors carry out their duties. They can generally be opened faster than high-street bank accounts and they offer superior protection without any concerns about the solvency of the bank.
This is of particular interest where the estate has assets worth more than the £85,000 FSCS limit - in essence, any administrator who is not using a safeguarded, segregated account to collect estate assets is taking a gamble on the solvency of the underlying bank.
As interior designers and procurement agents aren't regulated, they aren't required to segregate your project's FF&E funds separately from their own operating funds. This means that, heaven forbid, if your interior designer becomes insolvent during the course of your project, it could be almost impossible for an administrator to set aside your money to return it to you.
That is not to say that interior designers don't segregate your money - many will do so if for no other reason than to simplify their book-keeping and budget tracking for their finance teams, and to ensure that they have accurate records for you.
Similarly, it is a criticism sometimes levied at interior designers that their book-keeping seems opaque, they struggle to manage the FF&E budget transparently, or they don't show discounts or commissions they receive from suppliers.
With our FF&E Procurement Accounts, we support private clients and family offices in their project procurement payments, providing security, transparency and protection from the interior designer's insolvency at the same time.
Our Household PayMaster accounts support family offices, principals and house managers in planning, recording and executing payment transactions for all of the household's ongoing expenditure.
Particularly helpful for smaller family office teams, or households belonging to overseas principals, or multi-property households, our managed third-party payment service takes responsibility for paying all of the household's bills centrally.
Escrow agents help to bridge these gaps by offering a reliable, independent, objective third party to handle the exchange of money and documents in accordance with the parties' wishes and the terms of the escrow agreement, without having to rely solely on trust to ensure the security and success of the transaction.
We offer escrow solutions to address all of the above issues and would be delighted to provide you with a quote for your specific requirements. You can also check out our detailed service pages listed above.
Some of the shortfalls outlined above can be addressed through the purchase of a contract of insurance or a bond. These typically involve the payment of a fee (a "premium"), and in the event of default, the beneficiary under the policy must make a claim from the insurer or bondsman for their loss.
This approach comes with four primary drawbacks:
Cash-backed escrow, by contrast, addresses all of these issues. It is generally cheaper to administer than the cost of a premium; in most cases, there is no credit risk because the funds are segregated and safeguarded by the escrow agent; payouts generally happen within a few days; and there will not be any circumstances in which a payout is excluded—the terms of the escrow agreement will make it very clear what circumstances need to exist to trigger a payment, rather than necessarily the reasons behind those circumstances.
We are an established, independent escrow agent not affiliated to any bank or trustee. We're based in London, in a time zone conveniently located for transactions taking place anywhere in the world. As a small team, we're easy to get hold of, responsive and dependable.
While our processes are systems are rigorous, they are also flexible. We make the effort to understand each transaction and its nuances, meaning that we can provide the perfect solution for the parties.
Through our technology partners, we are able to open custodial/escrow accounts at the Bank of England with the click of a button. Unlike a bank (who accepts your escrow funds as a "deposit", whereupon it becomes part of their balance sheet and can be loaned to others), our accounts are all segregated (kept separately from our own) and safeguarded (not used for any other purpose). This means we are probably the most secure escrow agent in the United Kingdom.
We simply hold the funds liquid and unencumbered at the Bank of England, ready for use in the transaction. Exactly as escrow should be.
Most banks and corporate trustees see escrow as a slightly painful service they need to offer in order to justify their moniker of being 'full-service' - it's a service that most clients will wish for, but compared to their lending, advisory and trustee fee revenues, few banks consider escrow to be a profitable exercise.
As a consequence, most will ask for at least one of the parties to be (or to become) a client of the bank or trust company going forward - very few will offer it to entirely unrelated parties with whom they have no opportunity to make money in future.
We're different. We only exist to provide escrow services, and those are frequently once-in-a-lifetime deals - while we are delighted to enjoy repeat custom, we haven't built our business model on it.
We don't carry the overheads of a large bank or trust corporation, or anything like them. As a small team, we've invested heavily in technology to do the heavy lifting and we have no legacy systems that make life difficult for us - it's all cutting-edge, encrypted, bank-level technology, but without the legacy costs.
We are therefore almost always cheaper, often by a considerable margin (and, if for any reason we're not, we're always happy to have a commercial conversation).
Our streamlined systems and processes lend themselves to fast account opening. Often, the detail of escrow arrangements is left until quite late in the transaction - this isn't a problem for us; indeed, we're used to it - it's what we do.
Our accounts can be opened same-day if we have all of the information, and the vast majority are opened within 3-5 business days (most of which time is taken up with us carrying out our mandatory compliance activities).
Unlike a bank or trust company that is required to operate on standard terms, with 3-5 day turnaround times for their internal legal teams to sign off any deviations, we can work either on our standard conditions or on the basis of a document agreed between the parties, and we're flexible about what that looks like.
Each transaction is different, so we don't try to shoe-horn them into chapters of legalese - the terms of our participation are clear, concise and flexible.
dospay is a trading name of DOS & Co. Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales with company number 08294966.
DOS & Co. Ltd. is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority under the Payment Services Regulations 2017 (FRN: 833374) for the provision of payment services.
All of our GBP escrow and third-party managed accounts are segregated and safeguarded at the Bank of England.
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