In line with international financial rules, each club that wishes to process a transaction through the FCH must first successfully pass a compliance assessment. This due diligence process ensures that the FCH complies with national and international laws and regulations, as well as regulatory rules, which include rules on sanctions, anti-money laundering, anti-bribery and anti-corruption, and counter terrorism financing.
Clubs and member associations (as well as their related parties) must actively cooperate with due diligence requests for information from the FCH. In order to perform a compliance assessment, the FCH may request an individual, club and/or member association to provide information through the FCH onboarding platform.
More details on the type of information and documentation that is requested can be found at the bottom of this page.
Once this information has been received by the FCH, it will perform a risk assessment in order to determine whether the FCH can provide its services to the party. This risk assessment ensures that the FCH complies with the aforementioned financial and non-financial regulations. During this process, additional information may be required prior to processing the payment to further understand the context and parties to the transaction.
Once all requests for information and internal assessments have been completed, the FCH will inform the party if they have passed or failed the compliance assessment.
a. If the party passes the assessment, the FCH will continue onto the payment process.
b. If the party does not pass the compliance assessment, the failure will be forwarded to FIFA for possible sanctions according to the FIFA Clearing House Regulations. Once a party has been notified about a compliance failure, all future communications related to that case should be directed to the FIFA administration.
Summary of information and documentation requirements
Two key steps of the onboarding process for which FCH will need input from your club in order to complete the onboarding process are:
Filling in the Club Information Form (CIF); and
Submitting mandatory documents
In order to be better prepared for these two important steps, you are invited to take note of the below summary of requirements for both steps. For the full details, please refer to the onboarding guidelines document also downloadable on this website.
CIF
The Club Information Form (CIF) is intended to capture the information about the club that is relevant to the onboarding process and which will determine in part which types of documents FCH will request you to submit.
Admin section Information on the contact person that receives the e-mails from FCH on the onboarding process. This is the first TMS contact person listed in TMS.
Information that will be requested in this section of the CIF includes the person’s name, e-mail, phone number and the position the person holds at the club.
Club information Information requested here includes the legal name of the club, the club’s official registration number, the club’s country of registration, the club’s legal form (association, private company or public company), the club’s registered address (street, city and country), the club’s business address in case this differs from the registered address and the club’s bank details such as the bank’s name, the bank account number (IBAN), the SWIFT code and the bank’s location (country).
Legal representation and club ownership In this section information on the legal representatives and ultimate beneficial owners must be provided. This includes the positions and names of these individuals but also place, country and date of birth, their country of residence and their citizenship.
Make sure you have information available that allows you to identify individuals that own a significant stake in the club. The beneficiaries are the natural persons that receive benefits from the club and/or hold the ultimate decision-making power in the club.
In case your club does not have any individual shareholders, but the parent company of the club has one or more, please include these individual shareholders.
Source of funds and wealth In this section you will need to provide information on revenue and net results of the club including an indication of the sources through which the funds were generated (e.g. ticket sales, sponsor contracts etc.)
Documents
FCH is required to obtain documents that allow it to identify and to verify identity of the parties listed below. For each of these, FCH will send you a separate e-mail with a link through which you can upload the relevant documents.
The club as a legal entity, including information that allows the identification of individual shareholders (beneficiaries or the Ultimate Beneficial Owners - UBOs)
The legal representatives as an individual or individuals
NB: additional information or documents could be requested at FCH's sole discretion depending on the need for further clarification.
Club or MA (as legal entity) - Certified copy of extract of trade register of less than 3 months or certified Certificate of incorporation or Articles of Association or any other copy of an official document mentioning the name of the club, its legal form, registration number and address
- Articles of Association
- When available, an Extract from the official UBO register, otherwise a Copy of an official document mentioning names, surnames, date & place of birth of the UBO in the form of either shareholder register, or shareholder table extracted from the annual report or financial statement. And a copy of valid passport/ID of the UBO, if those documents do not mention date & place of birth of the UBO.
- Company organizational chart including the ownership % between structures/ legal entities
- Financial statements (latest fiscal year)
- IBAN/Bank account certificate or Bank statement (less than 3 months) or Bank reference letter (less than 3 months) of the club bank account used to receive/send the funds
Legal Representative (Only for President, CEO or Chairman) - Certified copy of valid passport/ID
Important notes
Translations: If the documents are not originally issued in one of the three official FIFA languages (English, French and Spanish) a translation of these documents will be required.
Certified document means the operation by which an authority authenticates the conformity to the original of the copy of a document. The certification must be performed by an independent (sufficiently independent from the client or natural person) and reliable person. You can ask the following if they offer this service:
Institution certifying IDs and passports
Solicitor/lawyer or Notary
An official from the Embassy or French Consulate
Councilor
An official of the town hall
Chartered accountant
In this case the person certifying the document should state the following: "Certified to be a true copy of the original seen by me," then sign and date underneath. The person certifying your copy may also need to include their printed name, occupation, registry number and contact information. The person you ask should not be related to the person or living at the same address.
The document provided for the identification of UBOs should include the UBO’s First and Last Name, Date of Birth and Place of Birth.
Company organizational chart: The company organizational chart is a visual representation of the structure of your group companies. This chart is valuable in that it shows the ownership relationships between legal entities in the corporate family. It provides information on the links and networks that exist between your company, subsidiaries, parental company and any other group of companies. It also outlines information on the reporting structures that exist. Please provide us such an overview WITH the amount of shares owned by any parental company and individual shareholder.
For associations, this chart needs to consist of a visual representation of the structure of your association with the governing and other bodies. This chart is valuable since it provides information on the links that exist within the association. It also outlines information on the reporting structures that exist.