Counterparty roles

A role says what a counterparty does with you. Alex borrows. Jordan invests. A firm of attorneys acts as conveyancer on a mortgage. Each of those is a role you grant, and each one unlocks something the counterparty could not do before.

Roles are one-sided. They describe the counterparty’s standing with your organisation, not a tie between two counterparties — for those, see counterparty relationships.

You work with them on the Roles panel of the counterparty screen.

What a role is

A role is a tag from the list your organisation defines. Borrower, investor, conveyancer, vehicle dealer, approved beneficiary, merchant and NCA borrower are typical, but the list is yours: a tenant adds a role by configuring one, never by asking for a release.

A role carries no fields of its own. It has a name and a status, and that is all. Everything a role demands — extra properties, a tax residency — is configured against the counterparty type, and asked for on the form that grants the role.

Column	What it means
Role Type	The role, as your organisation labels it
Status	Assigned while it is live, Revoked once withdrawn

stateDiagram-v2
    [*] --> Assigned: Assign role
    Assigned --> Revoked: Revoke
    Revoked --> Assigned: Reassign

A revoked role stays on the panel. It is history, not a deletion, so an auditor can see that the counterparty once held it and when that stopped.

Granting a role

Open the counterparty and select the Roles panel.
Select Assign Role.
Choose the Role Type. Only roles this counterparty’s type may hold are offered, and roles already listed are left out.
Fill in any fields the form adds, then confirm.

Roles can also be chosen while you register a counterparty, so a new borrower arrives holding the role rather than needing a second visit to this panel.

While a counterparty is still a draft, the panel shows the roles but not the buttons. Use Edit instead, so the whole amendment is approved as one change.

What a grant demands before it is allowed

Four things are checked, in this order. Any one of them refuses the grant, and nothing is part-saved.

Check	What it means	What you do
The role exists	The role must be one your organisation has configured	Ask an administrator to add it
The type may hold it	A counterparty type can be restricted to a named set of roles	Grant a role that type allows, or widen the type
Its mandatory fields are present	A role can make counterparty fields mandatory	Fill in the fields the form adds
A tax residency, where required	A role can require a declared country of tax residence	Complete the residency fields on the same form

The last two are why the form grows when you pick a role. A role that makes employment details mandatory puts those fields on the sheet. A role that requires a tax residency puts the country, tax number and from-date there too, and the role and the residency are saved together — there is no second screen to visit afterwards. See tax residency for what that declaration then does.

A field the counterparty already has a value for is not asked for twice. Two roles that both want a relationship manager ask once, on the first grant.

An identification is not part of this. Whether a counterparty must hold one is set per counterparty type and asked at registration, not per role. See identifications.

Assigning, revoking and reassigning are all eligible for countersign, so a second pair of eyes can be required on any of them.

What a role unlocks

A role is only as meaningful as what reads it. These are the things that do.

Reads the role	What holding it changes
Opening an account	An account type can require its owner to hold one of a named set of roles
Adding a party to an account	The same rule applies to anyone added to an existing account
Fields that name a counterparty	A field such as the conveyancer on a mortgage offers only counterparties holding that role
Which fields are mandatory	A field can be required only while the counterparty holds a particular role
Which operations are offered	An operation that sets those fields appears only for a counterparty holding the role
Extra panels	The conveyancer and vehicle dealer roles each reveal a panel listing the accounts they act on
Credit bureau reporting	An account is listed as not ready to report while its borrower lacks the reporting role

A role your organisation configures but nothing reads is inert. It still records a fact about the counterparty, and it still shows on this panel, but it opens no door until something is configured to look for it.

Revoking a role

Select Revoke on the role’s row.
Confirm.

The status becomes Revoked and the counterparty stops being eligible for whatever that role unlocked. Existing accounts carry on: revoking a role does not close an account, stop a payment, or remove the fields the role once made mandatory.

One revoke is refused. Where a counterparty type is configured to require at least one role, you cannot revoke the last one it holds. Grant the replacement first, then revoke.

To restore a revoked role, select Reassign on its row. Reassigning is a fresh grant and answers to the same eligibility check as the first one — so if the type no longer allows that role, the restore is refused.

Worked example

Woodgrove Bank configures its person type so that an NCA borrower must have an employer and an occupation recorded. The merchant role asks for neither.

Alex is registered as a person. No roles yet.
A clerk assigns Alex the NCA borrower role and leaves the added fields blank. The grant is refused, naming employer and occupation.
The clerk enters an employer of Acme Mining and an occupation of Fitter, then confirms. The role is now Assigned, and both fields are on Alex’s record.
The clerk assigns Alex the merchant role. Nothing extra is asked for — those two fields belong to the NCA borrower role, not to Alex.
Woodgrove requires every person to hold at least one role. Revoking Alex’s merchant role succeeds, because the NCA borrower role remains.
Revoking the NCA borrower role too is refused. It is the last one Alex holds, and the role stays Assigned.

What your organisation configures

The list of roles. Every role name and label is a settings row. Adding a role is configuration, not a release.
Which roles each counterparty type may hold. A type with no restriction may hold any role. A type that names a set may hold only those.
Whether a type must hold a role at all. Where it must, registration without one is refused and the last role cannot be revoked.
Which fields a role makes mandatory. One field can be required for borrowers and irrelevant for everyone else.
Which roles require a declared tax residency, per counterparty type.
Which account types demand a role of their owner, and which counterparty-naming fields demand a role of the counterparty they point at.
Whether roles run at all. Roles are a licensed capability — see switching features on and off.

None of it is code, so a bank that works with a different cast of counterparties onboards as configuration.