Avoka, the leader in digital customer acquisition journeys in banking, today congratulated customer HSBC in Europe for their recognition by The Banker’s Tech Project Awards 2018 as the winner of the Compliance Category for their project “Online Know Your Customer (OKYC).”

According to The Banker, their Tech Projects Awards 2018 “recognise the most innovative, imaginative and successful projects in financial technology from around the world. This year’s submissions were impressive examples of how the industry is responding to changing customer needs, as well as empowering staff to better serve customers.” Full awards list with information here.

As part of continual Know Your Customer (KYC) efforts in fighting financial crime, HSBC has implemented an on-going programme to update and validate the information held on all business customers. Having a deep understanding of each customer – what they do, where they do it, who they do it with and who benefits – is a key part of the bank’s ability to detect and deter attempts to defraud that customer, to launder money, to breach sanctions or to evade taxes.  

The problem is that while customers understood the need for KYC compliance programmes, they found the process laborious and time-consuming. To achieve compliance for a global body of customers and improve the customer experience at the same time, HSBC created the ability to digitally identify the required data and gather necessary information and documentation from their customer. The OKYC system was omnichannel enabled, linking input from a mobile phone, desktop PC, or direct engagement from an HSBC compliance specialist.

“This project drastically reduced the amount of effort required by HSBC customers, while allowing the bank to streamline its compliance processing. HSBC showed great leadership in the banking industry at large with this undertaking, and we are proud to have been a part of their success,” said Richard Austen, Avoka General Manager, EMEA.

Some of the improvements HSBC experienced after the project was implemented includes:

• Improvements to operational effectiveness, with case preparation time reduced to 40% of the previous average and time to review a case reduced to 30% of the previous average
• Reduction of the cost of compliance, with the cost per review now reduced by 30% of a comparable case completed outside of the platform
• Enhancement of the customer experience – Avoka’s ‘design once, display anywhere’ capabilities allow the remediation forms to be accessed by HSBC bank clients on any device, through the existing internet banking channel, and to clients through HSBC’s own public website using a variation of authentication methods

“By all accounts, the OKYC project was transformational for HSBC; they greatly improved their customer experience, reduced costs, and improved their operational effectiveness.  Congratulations to HSBC for being recognized by The Banker Tech Project Awards 2018 and their success in this company-wide strategic project,” Austen added.