Financial screening to comply with sanction requirements

As a UK education institution, the University of Leeds is legally required to comply with all sanctions regimes imposed by UK law by conducting due diligence screening. This page tells you about the checks we sometimes need to make after you apply for a course to ensure compliance with those sanctions regimes.

What are sanctions?

Sanctions are put in place by international institutions, such as the United Nations and the European Union, and countries, such as the UK and the USA, because of threats to international peace and security, human rights abuses and other criminal conduct, to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and/or to help combat terrorism.  

Financial sanction compliance  

Financial sanctions prohibit the University and our third-party service providers from dealing in any way with the funds or economic resources belonging to, held by or controlled by individuals designated by external agencies as sanctions targets. In addition, transfers of funds to and from certain countries may be prohibited unless authorisation from a government body is first obtained. Information on current UK sanctions can be found on the UK government website.  

Financial checks we may need to make after you apply

We may respectfully request some applicants to provide additional information in advance of registration. 

This is part of the controls implemented by the University to ensure that no relevant financial sanction regimes are breached, and to ensure our bank will accept payments from prospective students. 

We may request payment details, including the source of any funds, in advance of payment being received. This allows us to confirm that no sanctions regimes will be breached by our acceptance of a payment. 

If we require advance payment details and source of funds checks, we will notify applicants after they apply.

Responding to our request for information 

If we request additional information from you, please submit the details to us via the web form that will be shared with you.

Please read all the instructions we send you carefully as you may be asked to submit your information during a specific time frame. For example, you may need to submit the information no earlier than four months ahead of course registration and no later than two months ahead of course registration. Sometimes a time frame will not apply, in which case you will be asked to submit the information as soon as possible.

We will screen the submitted details against sanctions lists to ensure that applicants and payers are not sanctioned targets. Applicants from ‘broadly restricted’ countries, as defined by our bank, may be flagged for further checks, depending on the source of funds. After the completion of screening, if no issues have been identified then we will email you to confirm that we can proceed with your application.

If you have any queries about submitting the requested information, please contact your course admissions team. If you have applied to a foundation year, undergraduate or taught postgraduate course, their email address can be found in your offer letter or on the course page. If you have applied to a postgraduate research programme, their email address can be found on our graduate school contacts page.

Data storage and sharing 

If we request this additional information from you, it is your responsibility to ensure that any associated third parties are aware that you are sharing this data with the University.

The University of Leeds will store this data securely. We may share this data with our professional advisors, including our lawyers, bankers and insurers, where necessary in the course of the professional services that they provide to us. The data is shared with them securely. Further information can be found in the Student Privacy Notice.