Fortent says that its latest customer due diligence technology helps banks, brokerages, credit unions, and insurance companies take on the #1 concern faced by financial firms today: cutting costs.
Stricter customer due diligence laws in the U.S. and around the world have forced financial institutions to increase compliance efforts in this area leading to escalating compliance expenses at a time when the sector can least afford it. According to recent industry surveys, 60% of institutions’ direct compliance spending is in staff compensation, and with financial institutions struggling against huge losses and liquidity issues, firms are seeking ways to put the brakes on these rising operating budgets.
“There is a real business need for compliance technology that can drive cost savings while ensuring best practice,” says Sandy Jaffee, chairman and CEO of risk and compliance expert Fortent.
“Fortent set out to develop a KYC solution that would make a dramatic ROI impact with the goal of earning pay-back in less than one year,” says Jaffee. “We achieved this goal.” She notes that in the case of one client, a West Coast-based bank, the Fortent due diligence technology is generating such significant productivity gains in the bank’s account opening process that it expects to recover the cost in just a few months.”
In addition to reducing look-up times, Fortent KYC 3.2 eliminates the need for analysts to manage multiple data feeds and enables smarter risk-rating so that the riskiest customers get the most attention. Financial institutions of all sizes are seeking these features in their efforts to hold down the resource-consuming processes entailed in KYC from Customer Identification Programs (CIP) to ongoing Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD). Mid-sized and smaller institutions are still bogged down with manual and error-prone processes, while large firms face inefficiencies caused by the sheer volume of searches required, incompatible software in different lines of business, and redundant or duplicative tasks.
“Tackling this incompatibility issue was another top priority for us,” says Jaffee. “Fortent KYC was designed to have a truly groundbreaking interoperability that enables AML and KYC systems to ‘talk’ to each other without suspicious activity falling through the cracks. Compliance analysts and investigators can work easily across their AML and KYC systems, saving time and improving risk controls.”