Policies & Procedures

Client Money Handling Procedure

Introduction
The purpose of this document is to set out Urang Property Management’s (UPM) Client Money Handling procedures, in particular, the controls and procedures needed to observe best practice n the industry as per the RICS and TPI consumer standards. Specific attention must be made to the RICS professional statement, Client Money Handling 1st edition, October 2019.

Definition of Client Money;‍
Money of any currency (whether in the form of cash, cheque, draft, or electronic transfer)that:

          - An RICS-regulated firm holds for or receives on behalf of another person, including money held by a regulated firm as a stakeholder, and
           - Is not immediately due and payable on demand to the RICS-regulated firm for its own account
             defined by
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Excluding fees paid in advance for professional work agreed to be performed, and clearly identifiable as such, unless the fees are for work undertaken as a property agent as defined by the Rules of the RICS Client Money Protection Scheme for Property Agents. Source;Client Money Handling 1st edition, October 2019

How and where client money is held
Client money held by UPM is banked into discrete and undesignated client bank accounts. An undesignated client bank account is set up to hold client money for a single or multiple clients. For the discrete bank accounts, the name of the client is incorporated into the account name, as is the term, ‘client account’, to comply with best practice.
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The banking systems currently used are HSBC and Lloyds.

Access to funds
UPM staff have defined access to funds and the authorisation of payments in line with their individual roles and the set hierarchy within the company. This can be defined as follows;

          - Service Charge Accountants and Financial Administrators have the ability to allocate receipts and identify payments, and upload them for authorisation
          - Accounts Payable have the ability to upload payments for authorisation
          - The Business Accounts Manager authorises all clients’ account payments with no limits
          - Allocate receipts. The Director of Finance is able to sign off on all payments with no limits
          - The ounder is able to sign off on all payments with no limits
          - The Business Accounts Manager is not able to set up contractors or amend payment details on existing suppliers
          - The Director of Finance and Founder are able to set up sub-contractors or amend payment details on existing suppliers

Timescales for receipting of cash and cheques into a client account
The Accounts Payables and Receivables team at UPM logs all monies received on the day of receipt and, where possible, allocates them to the appropriate client money accounts. All cheques are normally banked within two days of receipt, but not more than five working days. Any unidentified funds will be logged into the suspense account, and if not identified within three months, the funds will be returned if the originator’s details are present.

Controls for the authorisation of payments from a client account
A withdrawal from a client account, can only be made if;
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          - We have permission through contract or direct instruction from the client to do so
          - All internal procedures have been followed in line with ‘Access to Funds’, set out above
          - Sufficient supporting evidence is provided and checked, so the payment can be made validly

How interest and bank charges are handled
UPM’s discrete client accounts are interest-bearing, instant access accounts. The maintenance and transactional banking costs are paid for by the clients; the maintenance costs are recovered on an annual basis.UPM has agreed with Lloyds that an aggregated rate of interest is applied to all the client accounts. UPM has agreed interest share rates with some of its clients in writing, but not limited to letters, email communication or explicitly through the contract to split the interest. The interest will be received into the UPM business account on a monthly basis, and the proportion due to each client will be paid within five working days or as near to that deadline as possible.

Bank reconciliation procedures
All the client bank accounts are reconciled monthly. We do this by performing a three-way reconciliation between the bank statements, cash books, and the individual client ledgers.

All bank reconciliations are reviewed by the relevant client accountant.

Providing information to clients about monies held on their accounts
As per the RICS Code, 3rd Edition, we provide in writing to all clients the details of the account and banking institution in which their funds are held. In addition, for some larger clients, we provide further client money information, i.e., balance and a review of their spend against budget on a quarterly basis.

Approved by: Sherif Mankarios
Director of Finance
Dated 23/03/2026