The challenge:
Our client, a large UK-based private bank with high net-worth customers, was reviewing its KYC procedures for existing and prospective clients. The bank was hoping to make client communications more efficient and reduce the number of interactions needed as part of their onboarding and reviewing processes, while maintaining high levels of regulatory compliance. As many of their customers have links with the Middle East, Diligencia was approached to see if we could help with streamlining their processes given that we specialise in due diligence and corporate intelligence solutions in the MEA region.
The solution:
Diligencia provided a demonstration of ClarifiedBy.com, our online platform, to their high-risk review team and, following a successful 2-week trial, the bank signed an annual subscription agreement. The client’s team members now use the legal entity data available on ClarifiedBy.com to search and verify the details they have for their existing and prospective clients, including any corporate affiliations, shareholdings and links to family offices, ruling families or state-owned enterprises.
ClarifiedBy.com is also used to undertake periodic and ad-hoc reviews, to request updates to existing profiles, to ask Diligencia to source data on new entities, and to request enhanced due diligence reports if additional information is needed. Where there are gaps in an existing CDD file – for example in the client’s career history, family background or corporate interests – Diligencia has been able to undertake specific and focused research to fill those gaps, thus reducing the need to contact the client and accelerating the overall process.
The result:
The entity data and services provided by Diligencia significantly enhance the bank’s onboarding and review capabilities by not only providing authoritative content, but by overcoming the cultural challenge of retrieving and interpreting original source documents, which are often only available in the local language, such as Arabic or Farsi.
The data from ClarifiedBy.com is used by the bank as an independent validation tool, to cross-check against the information provided by their clients and prospects, to ensure they comply with KYC regulations.
Since using ClarifiedBy.com, the bank has been able to reallocate some of its internal resources to focus on other, less challenging, jurisdictions. Their onboarding and review processes are quicker to complete, enabling the bank to receive its fees faster whilst continuing to ensure that the stringent KYC/AML regulatory requirements are continuously met.
