Can an AI agent verify source of funds and source of wealth?

It can check the evidence; a person decides whether it adds up. An AI agent can read payslips, sale contracts, probate papers, tax returns and statements, extract the figures, test them against the customer's declared story and flag gaps. Whether the explanation is credible and the evidence sufficient for the risk stays with a compliance officer.

What is the difference between source of funds and source of wealth?

They answer different questions, and the agent should keep them apart.

Source of funds is where the money for a particular transaction or deposit came from: the sale of a house, a bonus, a loan, a transfer from another account. It is about this money.

Source of wealth is how the customer accumulated their total wealth: a career, a business sale, an inheritance, investments over decades. It is about the whole picture.

A customer depositing 500,000 from a house sale has an evidenced source of funds once you see the completion statement. Whether their overall wealth makes sense, given a stated career as a teacher and holdings worth several million, is a source of wealth question that the completion statement does not answer.

What evidence does the agent assemble?

1. The declared story: what the customer says, in their words, broken into claims, such as "sold my business for about 2 million some years ago" or "inherited from my father".
2. Documents against each claim: which document supports which claim, and what it shows.
3. Figures extracted: amounts, dates, names and parties from each document.
4. Consistency checks: do amounts, dates and names agree across documents and with the declared story? Does the timeline work?
5. Plausibility: is the wealth consistent with the stated career, age and business?
6. Provenance: whether each document was supplied by the customer, confirmed with an issuer, or found in a public record such as a company filing or land registry.
7. Gaps: claims with no evidence, and documents that raise new questions.

Provenance carries real weight here. A copy of a sale agreement uploaded by the customer is a declaration until something independent confirms it. A company filing showing the sale, or a solicitor's confirmation, is much stronger. The source provenance register template is a way to record this for each item.

What does a person decide?

• Whether the explanation is credible as a whole.
• Whether the evidence is sufficient for the customer's risk level.
• Which gaps must be closed and which can be accepted.
• Whether something in the evidence, such as a payment from an unexpected third party, raises suspicion.
• Whether to accept, continue, restrict or exit the relationship.

The judgement often turns on things outside the documents: how the customer responded to questions, whether a gap is normal for their country or industry, whether a relationship manager knows the family's history.

What does a review look like?

Take a private bank onboarding a client who wants to deposit 3 million. The client says the money is the proceeds of selling a logistics company and that their wider wealth comes from the same business, built over twenty years.

The agent reads the share purchase agreement the client uploaded, the bank statement showing the receipt, and the company's public filings. The agreement shows a sale price of 4.5 million, paid in two tranches. The bank statement shows the first tranche, 3 million, arriving from a law firm's client account. The public filings confirm the client was a director and majority shareholder for eighteen years, and that the company was acquired by the buyer named in the agreement.

It flags one gap: the client says their wider wealth is about 8 million, but the business sale accounts for 4.5 million, and nothing evidences the rest. The officer asks the client, who explains dividends over many years and a property portfolio, and supplies tax returns. The officer accepts the source of funds as evidenced and the source of wealth as adequately explained for the client's risk level, with the property portfolio recorded as declared. The detailed methods are in how to review source of funds evidence with an AI agent and how to review source of wealth evidence with an AI agent.

Which controls make the review reliable?

• Each claim is linked to evidence or marked as unsupported.
• Provenance is recorded for every document.
• Arithmetic is shown. Totals and timelines are worked visibly.
• The agent does not judge credibility. It sets out consistency and gaps; a person forms the view.
• Decisions record what was accepted as declared. Later reviewers can see which parts rested on the customer's word.

The general principle is in our guide to AI compliance agents.

Where Pryme fits

In Pryme, every document reaches the agent with its provenance class. A sale agreement the customer uploads is declared; the same sale confirmed by a solicitor is signed. The agent's summary keeps the two apart, and accepting a source of wealth explanation is held for a named officer, who sees exactly which parts rest on the customer's word.