- May 03, 2019
Even though there are no regulatory pressures on companies when it comes to on-boarding business to business (B2B) relationships, companies are ever more concerned on aspects that might ruin their reputation or link them with any organisation that proves to be associated with negative media. This is leading to increased due diligence checks on suppliers, affiliates, agents, operators or any other kind of business relationship. This is mitigated through rigorous due diligence processes including specific documentation, questionnaires / forms as well as calculation of the associated risk. All of this bring the same operational challenges of dealing with such processes as any regulated industry. The problem of never-ending communication on email, checking of documents, assessing of risk and many other steps before such a business relationship can start.
This approach applies to many industries such as the pharmaceutical industries, engineering, telecommunications and aviation. However, one industry that is also taking this quite seriously is the gaming industry. Already operating in a high-risk environment due to the AML aspects on players, gaming operators are on the front line of also reducing their risk when getting into business relationships with other corporates.
This global gaming operator has opted for the deployment of KYC Portal as the underlying structure of the entire B2B on-boarding process and opted for integrated with GBG for further automation, the project is aimed at streamlining the entire process and reducing the amount of manual effort required in approving (or not) a business relationship.
The entire project is made up of the following main components described in more detail below.
- Configuration and setup of KYC Portal
The project started with the definition of what is required from the corporates at on-boarding and ongoing stages. Our client focused on creating a programme for the on-boarding of Suppliers, Affiliates, Operators and White Label relationships. All of these require thorough due diligence on the corporates being on-boarded. KYC Portal has been set up in a way were each programme has a separate configuration. The programmes focused on creating the requirements of data collection, fields, questionnaires, risk scoring and workflows based on the service that the corporate is being on-boarded for. This allows the system to be able to assess and move the respective applications based on the requirements defined. - Giving corporates access to the Customer Outreach Tool for self on-boarding
The customer facing plugin of KYC Portal called the Customer Outreach Tool (COT) is what is presented to the external corporates. The look and feel of this interface has been changed to be in line with the visual requirements of the gaming operator. Changing the colour schemes, fonts and logos to match the identity of our client. Once a corporate is about to be on-boarded, they are given access to COT to be able to setup their own account securely. COT presents all the workflow of on-boarding to the end customer in a simple guided 4 stepped KYC process. Which interface is dynamically built using the configuration in step 1 above. The user is first guided into populating the form requirements based on the respective settings of the programme. This dynamic approach of defining the fields that appear within COT allows the compliance team to update the data set at any point in time based on regulatory changes and internal policy. The next step in the process is that of uploading the required documentation, which list is also dynamically built using the configuration that the compliance team set in the first place. Any questionnaires that are required such as the declaration forms, source of wealth and source of funds are presented to the client in the third step. Finally, in the fourth step, the client can start adding the involved parties within the structure allowing them to build the entire hierarchy of their company. Throughout this process the customer can easily communicate with the organisation using the inbuilt chat function, as well as conducting audio and video calls. Such communication is fully audited against the application as well as being able to playback any of the recordings at any point in time Once all is ready within the application the customer can submit the entire application which in turn notifies the on-boarding team. - Backoffice on-boarding process in KYC Portal
Once the application is received, the compliance team can see the entire application that has been submitted with the entire company structure, all the data for each party, uploaded documents and filled in questionnaires. By the time the application has been submitted, KYC Portal would have already calculated the risk on the entire application as well as the risk per entity involved in the structure. The second that an application is submitted in KYC Portal, all the entities (both legal entity as well as individuals) are automatically submitted for a screening check. This client chose to integrate KYC Portal with the services of GBG. The automated service submits the subjects for on-going monitoring, meaning that should any subject appear on a PEP list, Sanction list or should any adverse media result in a match, then KYC Portal will notify the compliance team daily (only if a potential match is found). Agents can then act accordingly based on the results being returned. Also, this operator integrated the services of GBG when it comes to the Enhanced Due Diligence process. The compliance team opted for a manual trigger, whereby they decide on which subject they require a more thorough investigation. Once this trigger is set (a status button which they configured within KYC Portal), the system adds this request to a queue which is sent to the system of GBG automatically. Once GBG finalises the report and submits it to KYCP, the latter will file the PDF version of the Enhanced Due Diligence report against the subject in the document panel in KYC Portal. The compliance team is automatically informed that the report has been finalised so that they can resume with the process of evaluating the application. - Ongoing due diligence process in KYC Portal
On all corporates on-boarded in the past, KYC Portal will then alert the team on the ongoing obligations of KYC and AML. Based on the review policy settings that compliance would have set at programme level and based on the real time risk perception, KYC Portal alerts the compliance team when the respective review is due. The compliance team will then access the respective application / corporate and trigger the request for whatever material needs review (such as updating of details, confirmation of data, new documents, etc). This will trigger a notification to the customer to access their account within the Customer Outreach Tool. Once logged in the user will be able to see the specific tasks that are required for the review process as well as allow them to go through all the requirements in one, central, audited platform.
KYC Portal is all about streamlining the back-office operations of KYC and due diligence, not only at on-boarding stage but also throughout the entire lifetime of a subject. Use cases like the on above help the market in understanding what benefit can be achieved through automation of processes. Automation that not only reduces the cost of such processes, but also reduces the risk exposure that one is on-boarding within their business.
For more info contact us directly on info@kycportal.com or schedule your live demo with us today.