VOI When the Person Isn't Your Client: Attorneys Under POA, the Second Seller, Company Signatories

Tuesday morning, a man sits down across from you with a manila folder. He's selling his mother's unit — she's 88, in aged care, and he holds her enduring power of attorney. He's brought his own passport and driver licence, plus the power of attorney document. The property is in her name. She has never set foot in your office and never will. She's your client. He isn't. So whose identity do you verify?

His. And that answer trips up more firms than almost anything else in the VOI process, because it cuts against the instinct to verify "the client." Under the VOI Standard, identity verification follows the signature, not the retainer. You verify the person who signs — and the person who signs is often not your client at all.

The rule underneath: verify the person who signs

The VOI Standard sits in Schedule 8 of the ARNECC Model Participation Rules. Mechanically, it's simple: a face-to-face, in-person interview; original identity documents sighted; and a reasonable-likeness check between the person in front of you and the photograph on the documents. A VOI conducted this way supports a conveyancing transaction for two years from the date of the interview.

The part that matters here is who gets interviewed. VOI is conducted on the natural person who signs the documents. Companies, trusts and absent donors can't sit for an interview — a human signs on their behalf, and that human is the one whose passport you sight. Three consequences follow directly:

• Where an attorney signs under a power of attorney, the attorney is verified — not the donor.
• Where a company transacts, the signing officer or officers are verified — the company itself has no face to check against a passport.
• Where two people sell jointly, each seller needs their own VOI. There is no such thing as a shared or household VOI.

Four cases that come up every week

1. The attorney under a power of attorney

This is the classic. The donor is elderly, unwell or overseas; an enduring or general POA is in place; the attorney turns up to sign the contract or transfer. The VOI is conducted on the attorney — they're the one in the interview chair, and their documents are the ones you sight and photograph. The donor may never attend your office at all.

Keep two things separate in your head, though: verifying the attorney's identity is not the same as verifying their authority. Reviewing the power of attorney document itself — that it exists, covers this dealing, and hasn't been revoked — is its own task with its own file note. The VOI answers only one question: is this person really who they say they are?

2. Two sellers, one instructing client ("do both sellers need a VOI?")

A couple sells their investment property. One of them handles everything — emails you, signs the costs agreement, answers your questions. The other you've never spoken to. Come signing time, both names are on the title and both sellers sign, so both need their own face-to-face VOI, each with their own original documents. The second seller doesn't inherit anything from the first one's interview, no matter how long they've been married.

Practically, the easiest path is booking them in together: one appointment, two interviews, two certificates.

3. The director signing for a corporate vendor

When a company is the vendor, the VOI is conducted on the officer or officers who sign — typically a director, or a director and secretary. If two officers sign, that's two VOIs. And again: confirming the person is genuinely an officer with authority to sign for the company is a separate check from confirming their identity. The VOI handles the second, not the first.

4. The trustee signing for a trust

A trust can't sign anything; its trustee does. An individual trustee gets a VOI in their own name. A corporate trustee collapses into case 3 — you verify the signing officer(s) of the trustee company.

Here's the trap: these people usually aren't your customer

Now the part that quietly makes a mess of compliance files. In each of the four cases, the person you just verified is often not the firm's AML/CTF customer. Your client — the person you're providing the designated service to — might be the elderly donor, the instructing seller, the company, or the trust. The attorney, the second seller, the director-as-an-individual, the trustee-as-an-individual: you verified their identity for the land registry, but you never took them on as customers.

That distinction matters, because it means you shouldn't be inventing AUSTRAC obligations for them. Conducting a VOI on an attorney doesn't, by itself, mean running them through your customer due diligence pipeline — a customer risk assessment, ongoing screening, the full onboarding checklist — as if they'd engaged you. Those processes exist for your customers. Bolting them onto every person who ever signs in front of you creates work nothing requires, and worse, it buries your real compliance obligations under noise.

Most compliance systems make this hard to avoid, because they only have one kind of person record: "client." So the attorney gets entered as a client. The second seller gets entered as a client. Six months later your dashboard shows a dozen "clients" with incomplete risk assessments and untouched checklists — and your actual overdue AML work is indistinguishable from records that were never supposed to have AML work at all. When someone reviews your compliance position, that pollution reads as a backlog.

How CompliDesk handles the non-client VOI

This is exactly why CompliDesk supports VOI-only person records — a minimal record for someone you verify but don't act for. A VOI-only person sits entirely outside the AML checklist: no risk assessment slot waiting to be filled, no screening obligations implied, nothing flagged as overdue. Your compliance dashboard shows your customers and only your customers.

Everything about the check itself works identically to a client VOI:

• The same guided face-to-face wizard walks the interview;
• The same certificate PDF and examination pack are produced;
• The same 2-year currency tracking applies, so you'll know when an attorney's VOI is still usable for the donor's next transaction — and when it isn't (see how long a VOI lasts);
• The price is the same: $10 per completed check, whether the person is a client or not.

Two extra touches fit these scenarios specifically. First, you can link related people, so records reference each other — joint sellers point at one another, and an attorney's record links to the donor they sign for. When the file is examined later, the relationships are visible instead of living in someone's memory. Second, a VOI-only person can be converted to a full client later: if the attorney comes back next year buying their own place, their record — VOI history included — upgrades into a full client file, and the AML checklist starts from there.

One thing to be clear about: CompliDesk VOI is a face-to-face recording tool. It structures, records and evidences the in-person interview the Standard describes. It is not remote VOI, it doesn't query the DVS, and it makes no biometric claims — the reasonable-likeness judgement stays where Schedule 8 puts it, with the person conducting the interview.

Quick answers

Who needs a VOI? Every natural person who signs the transaction documents — client or not.

VOI and power of attorney? Verify the attorney, the person actually signing. Checking the POA instrument itself is a separate step.

Do both sellers need a VOI? Yes. Each seller is verified individually, face-to-face, on their own original documents.

VOI for a company director? The signing officer(s) are verified. Two signing officers means two VOIs.

How long does each of these last? Two years from the interview, same as any VOI — full detail in our guide to VOI validity.

Related reading: The conveyancer's guide to verification of identity · How long does a VOI last? · CompliDesk for conveyancers

This article is general information for practitioners, not legal advice. Check the participation rules and guidance that apply in your jurisdiction, and take advice on specific matters.