Telleroo's Handbook To Client Accounts

You can find a lot of valuable content around de-risking payments and payment security online. However, an aspect that gets less online attention is the evaluation of clients when offering payments as a service. Let's look at the impact of these evaluations, and how to review client risk.

The impact of client evaluations

At Telleroo, every client invited by bookkeepers and accountants is reviewed during the onboarding process. This evaluation is designed to carefully categorise clients based on their company's profile, determining whether they pass or fail.

For your firm (and Telleroo), these assessments provide:

• Enhanced security: Your company gains an extra level of safeguarding, protecting both financials and reputation.
• Enhanced relationships: Through the risk evaluation process, clients and firms can build stronger and more collaborative relationships. Open communication about risk fosters trust and allows for more effective collaboration to achieve shared goals.
• Long-term sustainability: A proactive approach to managing and mitigating risks contributes to the long-term sustainability of your services. By addressing potential challenges in advance, you are better positioned for resilience and continuity.

How Telleroo makes decisions on client accounts

You can access Telleroo's comprehensive risk policy and process in our help centre article, where you can also find information about the clients we accept.

As a broad summary, Telleroo takes into consideration multiple factors to get a comprehensive view of the client. These factors are:

1. Identification: Validity of clients' provided ID Name, DOB and Address.
2. Entities: As a general principle, Telleroo onboards small and medium-sized enterprises registered on the Companies House (Ltd, LLP, PLC).
3. Financial Institution: Only Regulated FIs are accepted, exceptions apply.
4. Not For Profit:  Only Regulated Charities are accepted.
5. Governments and Embassies: Only Government-owned entities and agencies are accepted.
6. Industries: Telleroo has both accepted and prohibited industry SIC codes to base decisions.
7. Geography: Telleroo onboards UK Established Companies registered on the Companies House.
8. Product: There must be a clear need for the client to use the Telleroo platform. To ensure value for the client, there is an economic reason for them to use the software.
9. Transactions: This relates to the payments clients are going to make. Payments to various industries are prohibited, and ties into the industry the company works in.

By having a Risk Appetite Policy, you can understand when and how you will accept clients. It also considers responsibility and accountability across your firm for the risk, including who can approve any exceptions you wish to make.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is important for both Telleroo and accountants to review clients when using Telleroo's payment services. It not only minimises the risk of errors or fraudulent activity, but it also benefits the reputation and efficiency of both parties.

Please note, there may have been changes to Telleroo's policy since this article was published on the 19 January 2024. For the current policy, please review our help centre article.