We just open-sourced our KYC platform. See why you need one

Did you know that banks in Europe spent an average of 40 Million Euros a year each for KYC compliance? KYC or Know Your Customer compliance is one of the most critical components of today’s service-oriented businesses in sectors such as Banking, Insurance, Government Benefit Schemes and much more. A simple KYC system for a bank would comprise of a form wherein customer identification details and their basic economic status is recorded. It also serves as a record of other financial commitments that the customer may have including information about bank accounts and other investments, personal assets lists, preference and priority lists for financial and related services and much more. Knowing your customers as well as your own family is the success recipe for businesses today. KYC plays an important part in making that information accessible to enterprises.

However, KYC compliance often comes at a cost. The costs include both manpower and financial spending on tools and systems. A bank like JP Morgan employs close to 13,000 people in their compliance department alone. The large workforce of compliance assurance specialists is a result of mounting fines and penalties running into tens of billions of dollars that the bank had to pay for noncompliance with regulatory measures. A recent survey of over 800 financial institutes revealed that more than 60% of participants finding increased regulatory compliance requirements over preceding years. This would put further pressure on the organizations to increase staff to ensure compliance for KYC procedures. From a customer perspective, KYC processes can be time-consuming and may lead to considerable delays. Client onboarding becomes a lengthy process because of multi-level agreements and permissions that need to be in place for strict KYC compliance. The delay could range from a couple of weeks to as much as 4 months. Such lengthy processes will eventually result in customers flocking to rivals having faster onboarding services. The fact that KYC helps you provide a better customer experience but comes with increased cost and overheads, calls for a technology intervention that makes the process a seamless affair. Today, successful enterprises manage their KYC process through automated tools.

We are open sourcing a KYC platform so that the businesses and organizations who are in need of a KYC integration in their business processes can easily do it without starting from the scratch. We hope to help organizations to curate consumer data for KYC compliance, to improve the customer experience of the whole KYC process.

Why have a KYC platform?

KYC is an integral part of today’s competitive service businesses. Customer knowledge is vital for enablement of personalized engagements with them. Companies that have access to this knowledge translate it to delightful experiences across customer touch points. Knowing what your customer’s needs are, where they are likely to invest, what they are likely to buy can literally ensure you have good sales funnel all through the year. It also serves to help enterprises comply with growing compliance and strict regulatory obligations across geographies.

Reuse of Information

A KYC platform enables organizations to create a master data of customers for use across multiple schemes and services they provide. The need for separate KYC processes in each service unit is eliminated and redundant data entry is avoided. This method has dual advantages: time saver for organizations and improved convenience for customers. Customers are relieved from filling multiple forms with the same data. Organizations do not have to wait for KYC information from the customer each time for processing a service request like opening a new account or availing a new line of credit services, etc.

Intuitive Dashboard

Enterprises that require KYC data have access to all the necessary information about customers in an intuitive dashboard. All customer requests, their financial credentials, and history, service requests, etc. will be available for multiple officials at the organizations. The dashboard makes it possible to set multiple levels of permissions for executives to access and utilize KYC data and keep track of changes made in existing KYC documents. This allows for increased transparency since KYC information often contains sensitive personal data of consumers.

Faster Approvals

A KYC platform enables organizations to distribute KYC approval requests to officials with enough information to quickly decide on approving or rejecting the request. It becomes easier to track customer’s approval rates to determine the probability of their new requests to be accepted or rejected.

Multiple Platform Integrations

KYC information often needs to be available for easy access by multiple enterprise systems, especially in the financial sector. Bank CRMs, Loan Management, ERP, Analytics and Core Banking systems may require KYC disclosures periodically to meet regulatory obligations. KYC systems can be integrated with multiple technology systems within enterprises for easier information access. This creates a huge cost advantage for organizations as they would not be forced to build a KYC functionality from scratch into each of their operational software systems.

Integrated Data Services

Enterprises can achieve a high degree of automation with their KYC document collection and verification thanks to inbuilt email and form creation functionality. The system allows administrators or officials to connect with customers with an inbuilt email system. It can be used for customer onboarding emails, follow-up emails for document verifications, announcements of new KYC requirements with links to automatic data collection forms and much more.

KYC platforms empower organizations to curate and organize this customer knowledge and make it accessible to enterprise-wide customer engagement platforms. Simultaneously, these platforms enable organizations to adhere to strict regulatory requirements from time to time without having to trouble customers every time a new compliance request is made for KYC information access.