referencing company asking for limited company bank statements

[rumble]

first of all let's name them 'Sterling', they're the worst referencing process I have ever seen in the last few years.
There's no communication, their online forms are horrible and there's no information on what they actually require. Seems mostly geared for the US market. And won't accept unicode characters on their forms. #end of rant

so they're asking for my limited company bank statements for a number of years, to match against contracts I provided !!!!
The last thing I want to do is to share financial information from agencies/clients I worked with.

How common is this? I have never ever seen anyone asking for my ltd company bank statements before.

[WTFH]

first of all let's name them 'Sterling', they're the worst referencing process I have ever seen in the last few years.
There's no communication, their online forms are horrible and there's no information on what they actually require. Seems mostly geared for the US market. And won't accept unicode characters on their forms. #end of rant

so they're asking for my limited company bank statements for a number of years, to match against contracts I provided !!!!
The last thing I want to do is to share financial information from agencies/clients I worked with.

How common is this? I have never ever seen anyone asking for my ltd company bank statements before.

It really depends.
What role is it that you have applied for?
Is it through a consultancy or similar?

Why are you trying to put unspecified unicode characters into a form?

If it's a big issue for you, then I'd suggest walking away from the gig.

If you want to take a better attitude to it, phone up the client and politely ask them why the information is required, etc. I had one where I was asked to provide copies of school exam certificates, which I've no idea where they are. I spoke to the client and explained, they told me it was a US company they used, but it wouldn't be a problem if I uploaded a blank sheet with the words "unable to find copy of certificate" on it. That's what I did and they were perfectly happy. But it requires communication between you and them.

[northernladuk]

Must admit I don't remember having my company finances checked but if you go for finance roles you are going to be asked for your personal bank statements at some point which I imagine would piss you off even more so either way you are going to get asked to provide things you don't think you need to or want to stump up. It happens.
At least you've got a choice.

[Smartie]

Sterling are outrageously bad.

They ask for documents that, from the name, it's not clear at all what they mean.

They ask for 10 years of documents where only 3 are required.

They ask for employer references for contract clients despite being told about that.

Anyway, just talk to your prospective employer and clarify what information they really need then tell them to tell Sterling again.

Sterling were used fairly recently by a large financial firm that moved dozens of long term contractors to an employed consultancy model (due to new long service restrictions).
There were many problems with them.

[rumble]

thank you Smartie

I've since replied to about 10 identical emails sent from a template they use to ask about information on a particular contract, so I have sent them my accountant details 10 times.
It looks to me that they grab a reference request, and split each one of the periods into different tasks that they then assign to different folks so there's no ownership of that reference flow and as a result nothing makes sense from my side and their emails asking for info.

I'll ping the client if sterling asks for more weird stuff