Re-engineering KYC screening to maximise operational efficiency
time spent on
risk-screening activities
The challenge
At Wealth Dynamix, we work with our clients to deliver on a philosophy of ‘continuous improvement’. We may have solved the priority business challenges with our initial delivery, however, successful businesses are continually evolving and so too should the technology that supports them.
Although the initial implementation delivered to the customer had delivered transformative efficiency gains into the business as a whole – introducing dynamic, rules-driven workflow orchestration into everything from prospect nurturing, to onboarding, to ongoing reviews, amendments and servicing – we weren’t fully satisfied.
At Wealth Dynamix, we apply intelligence-driven insights and analytics to the workflows managed using our solutions. This allows us to identify pinch points in those workflows; where time-related SLAs are under pressure or where items submitted for approval are not approved the first time. The data for the customer in question revealed some interesting insights. It showed that time-based SLAs for business risk assessment were occasionally exceeded and that, where this did occur, there was a common reason – that the review and approval step was not being passed the first time.
The consensus was that the challenges here were tied to the following:
- Prior decisions by the customer to use multiple third-party screening solutions for different risk factors rather than a single solution.
- An initial decision to deprioritise the delivery of an integrated screening solution until a single third-party screening solution had been identified that could screen for all of the required risk factors, both on a one-off and ongoing basis.
The solution
After discussion with the customer, the following actions were agreed:
Integrated screening solution
To introduce an integrated automated screening solution covering PEP, Sanctions and Adverse Media screening (as a minimum) on a global basis.
Screening vendor assessment
To use our industry expertise to assess potential third-party vendor candidates, identifying and recommending the leading solution, considering functional completeness versus customer requirements, ease of technical connectivity and commercial attractiveness amongst a host of other considerations.
Early prospect screening
Enhance the existing WDX1 prospect nurturing workflow to enable early screening against prospects, identifying and addressing potential business risk at the earlier in the engagement process.
Update onboarding & reviews workflows
Enhance the existing onboarding and review processes to incorporate the new integrated screening solution.
Configurable initial screening triggers
Implement configurable ‘data thresholds’ for the automated triggering of screening, allowing an optimal balance to be struck between screening at the earliest opportunity and minimising false positives.
Screening results visualisation
The introduction of a ‘screening summary’ widget to provide a simple, self-auditing view of screening undertaken against a prospect, onboarding case, review case or, for ongoing spot screening, as part of a client 360.
Automated ongoing screening
Introduce the capability to set ‘continuous re-screening’ logics to automatically drive how often an individual or entity is rescreened based upon configurable business rules, such as prior screening results or the risk associated to prospective or actual clients to which they may be connected.
Screen past names & aliases
Introduce the ability to hold multiple screening records against any one individual, covering previous names and aliases as well as their current formal name.
Dashboard driven auto-escalation
Enhance the role-based dashboard for Compliance to provide full details of any issues identified from the integrated screening and auto-escalated to the relevant users to speed up their mitigation.
The outcome
- A fully-integrated, automated screening solution provided a 90% reduction in the total time spent on risk-screening activities.
- The solution we implemented provided a major reduction in business risk around screening.
- Third party BAU costs were reduced by identifying a single third-party solution that could meet all screening requirements within a single application.
- Improvement in ‘right first-time rate’ and a significant reduction in the effort spend on risk reviews and approvals; automated screening ensured all relevant risk considerations were consistently gathered and eliminated any chance of manual error from re-typing between systems.
- Further reductions were seen in the average elapsed time taken to complete an onboarding or review process from the improvement in the number of approval items able to be passed on first ask.
- Next steps were identified to potentially drive further efficiency through introduction of an automated approval logic for cases where no screening issues had been identified, where the client type was a simple structure and where no other risk factor flags were triggered (country risk lists for example).
