A wealth and regtech partnership announced a few weeks ago sheds light on the never-ending drive to make client onboarding a less annoying and drawn-out process in the wealth management and private banking space. We talk to one of the parties involved.

There is a need for a more risk-based approach to onboarding clients into areas such as wealth management as the sector wrestles with efforts to avoid illicit financial inflows while not hitting legitimate clients with onerous waiting times.

Regtech continues to develop. In January, this news service reported that PassFort, a Moody’s analytics company, had partnered with Trulio, an identity verification company, a venture highlighting how know-your-client tech continues to develop. PassFort, which provides software-as-a-service regulatory technology solutions, and Trulioo will offer regulated businesses a way in which to digitise their KYC processes. PassFort provides the orchestration layer that can be used to map and manage any type of risk and compliance workflow, while integrating Trulioo’s identity verification checks to bring the data needed to satisfy KYC and KYB (know your business) processes.

“The issue is how do we make this process truly risk-based? [Our system] is less based on a one-size-fits-all model and more tailored to the specific characteristics of each and every customer,” Donald Gillies from PassFort, its CEO and a co-founder, told this news service in a call. “That has allowed clients that use PassFort to transform how they onboard customers. We can have a quick customer experience for some low-risk products and services and, as a client does more and you observe their business, you can then upgrade or add to their risk and compliance profiles to offer more services.”

“There can be different risk scores for different products and services, allowing tailor-made approaches for clients,” he continued. “For example, you may want to start doing business with a client in a home market, such as the UK, so there will be a set (and potentially a lighter touch process for that). However, when that same customer wishes to start purchasing financial products in the US, there may be different and more onerous onboarding or compliance requirements to contend with (such as W8-BEN forms, etc.). By having an interactive and tailored approach to onboarding you can build these risk and compliance profiles out over time instead of all upfront – delivering a much better customer experience.”

Getting onboarding right remains one of the most important wealth industry challenges. This news service, working with technology firm Fenergo, issued a report in October 2019 showing that for far too many firms, the onboarding experience falls short of what clients should expect. A number of firms are competing in the space, such as Switzerland-based Appway, Apiax, LexisNexis Risk Solutions and Docupace, to name just some of them. There is a tension between how technology can assist wealth managers in sifting through masses of data to speed up onboarding, while the digital world also creates new data that can add to complexity.

Gillies said that demand for swifter, smoother onboarding is driving business. 

“Many institutions are choosing to partner with PassFort to create flexible, digital compliance processes, using its case management solution in concert with data provided by Refinitiv’s World-Check One,” he said. 

PassFort, which was started in 2015, provides a CRM for financial risk professionals. Designed to avoid a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach, their CRM draws together many of the “single-point” solutions that already exist in the market, but which don’t always integrate well together, he said. “Our idea was to streamline all this,” Gillies continued.

PassFort was founded in 2015 by Gillies and Henry Irish. Its solutions have supported regulated financial services companies which have onboarded more than 4.5 million customers each year in 197 countries.