Encompass Corporation, a fast-growing provider of intelligently automated Know Your Customer (KYC) solutions, recently carried out a survey questioning onboarding and compliance professionals about the challenges they come up against in their day-to-day roles.

While more than half of all respondents operate within compliance, others who work across the associated industries, in areas such as business development and front office, also provided insight into their jobs, the customer groups that they target and the way in which they approach onboarding new clients.

Key findings:

• Top three challenges when performing KYC are:
  • customer outreach (80%)
  • identifying beneficial ownership (59%)
• unwrapping corporate structures (57%)
• 28% of respondents are using 3+ registries (28%) to onboard a customer
• 30% of respondents are using 3+ sources of business information to onboard a customer
• 81% say they face some/significant challenges in ensuring consistency in data gathering across their business
• Mid-market proves most difficult to navigate in terms of KYC tasks and onboarding:
  • 48% of respondents rate the process for these customers as challenging
• only 29% found this challenging when dealing with sole traders/individuals
• Over half are implementing customer onboarding technology in an effort to deal with the challenges they find
• 52% are already automating manual processes with a considerable proportion planning to do so in next year

Nick Ford, Head of Partnerships at Encompass Corporation, commented:

“Global financial services firms have many priorities and have to negotiate a range of challenges as they strive to provide the best service in today’s fast-paced environment. When taking a deeper look at these challenges, no area is more pertinent than Know Your Customer (KYC) and customer due diligence.

An increase in regulation is adding a degree of complexity to customer due diligence requirements and it has become clear that teams are struggling to manage ever-changing rules while keeping up with various responsibilities.

Implementing customer onboarding technology, such as that offered by Encompass, can significantly lighten the load of onboarding and compliance professionals by improving efficiency and accuracy while allowing manual effort to be focused on other areas that depend on human intervention. Using automation technology enables organisations to get the full picture of their customers and entities they are considering forming business ties with in a way that is both efficient and cost effective.”