An effective Know-Your-Customer strategy involves finding the right balance of procedures, so innocent applicants don’t have to struggle through unnecessary paperwork and swamp banks with insurmountable diligence. How can banks swiftly identify riskier prospects while not wasting time and attention on vetting squeaky-clean clients? The answer is automation.
Why automate the KYC process?
During the onboarding process, banks sift through records like proofs of address, passports, articles of incorporation, and data from consumer reporting agencies to verify the authenticity of a potential client. Preventing anonymity, evaluating corruption risks, and exposing false identities protects banks, and society as a whole, against brazenly illegal activity. Wading through hard-copy paperwork using manual, hands-on methods is not only risky, but incredibly time-consuming. As a document-intense process, KYC is the perfect champion for automation. But, according to a recent study, only 40.6% of KYC professionals say that their onboarding operations are fully automated. A surprising 26.2% still manage the entire process manually, making it difficult to promptly process the modern inundation of data.Automated technology, like digital process automation, can supplement human eyes and ears to read, extract, review, and collate identity-related data. Not only can automation do the preliminary legwork, but it can efficiently maintain an iron-clad audit trail required by many governing bodies.
Leverage these opportunities for automation
By automating KYC, banks can quickly validate identifying documents, capture biometric data, and automatically cross-reference paperwork with third-party databases. Plus, banks need streamlined practices to perform these vital checks whether a customer is applying in-branch, over the phone, or through an app. Missed connections between data points aren’t just a paperwork misstep but can cost an institution billions of dollars in regulatory fines. Standing sentinel against these risks are efficient KYC checks underpinned by a well-oiled automation strategy. Here are the areas where top-performing compliance departments are implementing automation.
