bank sends the same questionnaire every year do I really have to do it again

The questions change little, so the answer can remain the same

Yes, the bank must send that list to you every year — that is an obligation under the client due diligence that banks conduct periodically. But that does not mean you have to find out the answer all over again every year. Most questions on a bank list concern fixed characteristics of the business: the statutory name, your registration number with the Chamber of Commerce, the registered address and the sector. These data rarely change in most businesses for years. If the answer was correct last year and nothing has changed, it will usually still be correct this year.

What can differ annually are the size-related questions: number of employees and turnover. Finding the answer itself is not the work — looking up the current figure is. So keep those two figures in a central location, and the rest of the list is copying. Some banks also ask about UBOs (the persons who ultimately own or control the business) or the nature of transactions. These questions are specific to client due diligence and are separate from the identity and size data that you already record elsewhere.

Why banks must ask this annually

Banks are required to update their client due diligence periodically; this follows from the statutory control obligation that rests on financial institutions, regardless of what an individual bank asks in its own portal. The Trade Register Act 2007 establishes which basic data of a business — name, number, address, sector — are officially registered. Because the bank requests the same data each year in a slightly different format, retyping remains necessary, even though the content is identical. This is precisely where a permanent chain file saves time: not in the answer itself, but in repeatedly entering it.