SWIFT announces today that Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development has joined the Know Your Customer (KYC) Registry, a centralised repository that maintains a standardised set of information about correspondent banks required for KYC compliance.

Doan Thi Thanh Huong, Deputy Director at Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, says, “As one of the first banks in Vietnam to join The KYC Registry, we strongly support SWIFT’s community initiative to reduce the cost and risk related to know your customer compliance. The KYC Registry enables us to proactively share information with correspondent banks, increasing efficiency, reducing cost and allowing us to demonstrate KYC compliance more quickly and effectively.”

Banks contribute an agreed ‘baseline' set of data and documentation for validation by SWIFT, which the contributors can then share with their counterparties. Each bank retains ownership of its own information, as well as control over which other institutions can view it. Banks are not charged for data contribution or for using the Registry to share their KYC information with other banks. To maximise the Registry’s benefits, data consumption is free in 2015 for banks that contribute their own KYC information to the Registry and promote it to their correspondents.

Bart Claeys, Head of KYC Compliance Services at SWIFT, says: “The KYC Registry is a cornerstone of SWIFT’s commitment to help its community comply with financial crime compliance regulations. We are very pleased with the level of participation in the Registry, both from large global and regional banks as well as financial communities in different countries. Adding Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development in Vietnam to our growing list of participants demonstrates the value the KYC Registry is bringing to the correspondent banking community, and its role of enabling financial inclusion in developing markets.”

Eddie Haddad, Managing Director in Asia Pacific at SWIFT, adds:  “We continue to see an increasing emphasis on financial crime compliance here in ASEAN. Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development plays an important correspondent banking role in the region, and we are very pleased that they will be using The KYC Registry to support their KYC compliance activities.”

Launched in December 2014, the KYC Registry includes entities from more than 125 countries, facilitating compliance with a growing number of correspondent relationships worldwide. The KYC Registry is operated by SWIFT and was developed in collaboration with major global banks around the world.