Fees in Advance Deposits

DOS & Co. is a legal and payment services firm that provides unrestricted legal services, escrow services and regulated payment services. It is registered in England and Wales, and also registered with the Financial Conduct Authority for the provision of payment services. You will find it on the Financial Services Register under Firm Reference Number 833374.

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No. DOS & Co. is a registered payment service provider. Under its FCA permissions, it can carry out all services enabling cash to be placed on a payment account as well as all operations required for operating a payment account. For the Cash Deposit Manager, however, DOS & Co. works as your bare trustee, opening an account on your behalf and in your name at the Bank of London, which stores your funds unencumbered at the Bank of England.

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While Bank of London does allow parties to open operating accounts, it does not provide savings or deposit accounts to its clients.

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Your Cash Deposit Account is a sub-account of a segregated client account held at the Bank of London. The sub-account is held in your name, containing only your funds, separated and segregated from everyone else's funds. Each month, we receive interest from the bank which is then applied to your account.

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High-street banks accept deposits (hold your money) and then make money on that money by lending it out to others (and charging interest to those borrowers). They receive the full Bank of England base rate from your deposits, but that goes towards their operating costs and overheads. They generally pass on only a fraction of that amount to you, the person whose money they are using.

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National Savings and Investments (ns&i) is backed by HM Treasury. They are the governmet's savings bank (they were originally the Post Office Savings Bank). When you deposit with them, they lend your money to the Government, so their rates reflect whatever the Government is willing to pay from time to time to borrow money. If the Government can borrow money cheaper (say, from another government), then ns&i will drop their rate so that it remains competitive.

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The Bank of England pays its full base rate on all deposits made with it. We deposit your funds at the Bank of London who, in turn, deposit those at the Bank of England. The Bank of London receives the full base rate from the Bank of England, takes a small percentage to cover the cost of its expensive technology and human resources that enable these accounts to even exist, and then passes the rest to us. We take 10% of the interest that comes through, leaving you with 90%.

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Ultimately, your money is held unencumbered, in cash, at the Bank of England. It is never loaned out, pledged or otherwise interfered with - it simply sits there. Legally, are we are your bare trustee, our name isn't on your money anywhere. We operate client accounts with the Bank of London, which are opened in your name and contain your funds. Those funds are held by the Bank of London at the Bank of England.

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Accounts can be opened by UK entities, UK and EEA Nationals and UK residents. We can also open accounts for trusts and family offices whose beneficiaries all meet those requirements, subject to the balance of these eligibility criteria.

The minimum deposit amount is £1,000,000.

The minimum deposit amount has to be retained for your first 3 months of holding an account with us, after which there is no ongoing minimum deposit or balance.

There is no fixed maximum amount. We will agree a maximum amount with you as part of your onboarding, and review this periodically as your circumstances evolve.

We cannot accept any deposits from clients whose wealth derives from any of the following:

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• Production or trade in any product or activity deemed illegal under host country laws or regulations or international conventions or agreements including, without limitation, host country requirements related to environmental, health and safety and labour aspects;
• Production or trade in weapons or munitions;
• Quarries, mining or processing of metal ores or coal;
• Giving or receiving of gifts that could be interpreted as intending to influence business decisions;
• Production or trade in tobacco;
• Trade in wildlife or wildlife products regulated under CITES;
• Production or trade in radioactive materials;
• Commercial logging operations or purchase of logging equipment for use in primary tropical moist forest;
• Production or trade in pharmaceuticals subject to international phase outs or bans;
• Production or trade in pesticides/herbicides subject to international phase outs or bans;
• Drift net fishing in the marine environment using nets in excess of 2.5km in length;
• Production or activities involving harmful or exploitative forms of forced labour/harmful child labour;
• Production or trade in ozone-depleting substances subject to international phase outs;
• Production or trade in wood or other forestry products from unmanaged forests;
• Production, trade, storage or transport of significant volumes of hazardous chemicals, or commercial scale usage of hazardous chemicals;
• Any business relating to illegal pornography or prostitution;
• Abusing confidential or material non-public information;
• Trading of animal fur, bones or ivory;
• Diamond drilling without Kimberly certification;
• Indecent or obscene material, including child pornography;
• Trading of fireworks or explosives or nuclear weapons;
• Drug trafficking, including trade in chemicals which may be used to manufacture synthetic drugs;
• Human body parts or pathogens;
• Online or offline gambling, betting, casinos, prize draws, gift cards or lottery/scratch cards;
• Bearer shares and bonds;
• Donations or charitable grants (though we can work with independent schools regarding Fees in Advance);
• Money exchange dealers or money service businesses;
• Cash pooling structures; and
• Cryptocurrency or derivatives thereof.

You can complete our Application Form or Contact Us for more information.  If you already know an account holder, please ask them to introduce you directly to their Relationship Manager.

For your convenience, your account is set up to auto-renew. You agree that we may deduct your annual charges / membership fee from any balances held with us.

Subject to all of the usual compliance checks, we can open accounts in as little as 24-48 hours.

In order to be able to open an account, we will need to carry out the usual Know-Your-Client, source of funds and source of wealth checks.

At present, we can only open accounts in pounds sterling. We are in talks to be able to extend this to include Euro and US Dollars in the near future.

Your funds are held in segregated client accounts at the Bank of London which, in turn, stores those funds unencumbered at the Bank of England.  The Bank of London is also part of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, protecting eligible deposits as well.

DOS & Co. is your bare trustee. In the unlikely event of its insolvency, your funds are not available to its creditors and the administrators would contact you to arrange the return of your funds from the Bank of London.

If the Bank of London becomes insolvent, your funds will not be available to its creditors. We will work with the administrators to release your funds and return them to you or, if possible, to deal with the Bank of England with a view to stepping into the Bank of London's shoes to maintain your accounts with them.

In theory, before a central bank would become insolvent, it would be able to print more money. International credit rating agencies keep track of banks and bond issuers to give clients and potential clients an idea of their ability to repay funds - you can see the Bank of England's Fitch rating here.

The Bank of London is FSCS registered - you can access more information here. More information on the FSCS (including on eligibility) is available here.

AER means "Annual Equivalent Rate" and is the interest rate you would earn in a 12-month period if you put your money in an account at the beginning and left it there for a full 12 months without adding to it or taking away from it, other than the interest you receive.

The calculation of AER depends on the frequency with which interest is paid.

If the interest is paid once a year, the AER will equal the APR.

If the interest is paid monthly, however, then each month you will earn interest on a little more money (your initial deposit plus any accrued interest to date), so the AER will be higher than the APR.

APR means "Annual Percentage Rate" is designed to be a clear comparison tool between products.  It includes all interest and any fees, so is the net effect of the product on your wealth.

For savings accounts, a higher APR means you earn more money.

Interest rate 'blending' is the term given to placing different sums in different accounts on different rates of interest to arrive at an overall, or 'blended' interest rate on the funds.

Compounding in interest is the effect of having a sum of money which earns interest over a period.  Over the following period, the interest is earned on the original sum and the amount of interest earned so far.

The effect of compounding can be enormous, because of this notion of 'earning interest on interest'.

The power of compounding was called the eighth wonder of the world by Albert Einstein, or so the story goes. He also is rumoured to have said: "He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn't, pays it."

Liquidity in investment terms simply means 'how quickly you can turn your investments into cash'.  The most liquid investment is cash itself (because it is already in cash).

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