Customer Due Diligence for Banks and Financial Institutions – A Decrease in Theft

You may or may not onboard customers and clients without performing a thorough identity verification check. For example, when onboarding a new employee, businesses perform in-depth employee verification; similarly, banks and financial institutions dealing in monetary transactions have to perform an in-depth analysis of the customer before they onboard the client/company.

Customer due diligence for banks and other monetary sectors is the most essential factor in complying with AML regulations. Multiple other international regulations are mandated to be followed to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The strict guidelines that have been issued over the years are for the benefit of society.

What is Customer Due Diligence for Banks?

Customer due diligence for banks is the main component of AML/KYC compliance and was formed to aid banks and financial institutions to verify the users to determine whether they are who they claim to be. In addition, they are verified to make sure they are not on any politically exposed people (PEPs) lists and perform their risk assessment. Majorly, customer due diligence is the act of performing ongoing verifications on the customer to ensure that they are accurately verified prior to being onboarded.

Why is Customer Due Diligence for Banks Necessary?

When you examine the risk of ineffective compliance, it starts to give additional insight into why banks and other monetary institutions are providing funds in large amounts to comply with anti-money laundering. These counterfeits aren’t meant just to stop the rising threats of financing terrorism but also to put a stop to other financial illegal crimes. Although sadly enough, it isn’t a strategy by money mules alone, it is presently being implemented across a wide range of shell companies.

Customer due diligence is the heart and soul of AML and KYC checks and is formed to help banks and financial corporations verify the users they claim to be.

Listed here are the main reasons to consider customer due diligence for banks alarmingly:

1. Large Compliance Penalties: Regulatory authorities that are involved with anti-money laundering at a large pace are on the rise.  For a decade, organizations have lost approximately $33 billion in anti-money laundering and similar fines all around the world.  Most of these must be leveled against United States organizations.
2. Technical Cyber-attacks: Imposters are apprehending more technical mechanisms to stay undetected, which involves globally joined technology, insider data, the obscure web, and retail strategies.
3. Reputational losses: Anti-money laundering problems have made businesses undergo reputational losses at a large scale.
4. Increasing Expenses: The majority of the anti-money laundering compliance activities require mental and physical effort, which makes them ineffective and difficult to increase. The cost of anti-money laundering compliance spread across the United States of America’s monetary services firms amounts to billions of dollars each year. While some are different monetary transactions, institutions are funding billions of dollars annually on knowing your customer and CDD.
5. Adverse User Experience: Compliance employees majorly have numerous touch-points with an acquired ability to gather and verify data. Therefore, monetary institutions lose potential clients and customers unexpectedly due to ineffective or slow onboarding processes.

The Legal Board and CDD

The incorporation of CDD for banks is necessary for businesses to uncover terrorist financing. This is to prevent any user or customer related to money laundering from entering into the sanctity of the business.

This includes majorly one-off payment even though it does not indulge in a legitimate company relationship. A company-user relationship is known as being formed when more than one party engages to perform a consistent relationship with the company or to conduct a one-off payment.

KYC due diligence and anti-money laundering regulations have made it difficult for banks to enter a customer into the system. While different organizations have different procedures, the banks take approximately 25 days to onboard a client.

Concluding with a More Rational Strategy to Customer Due Diligence

More than it can be emphasized, consumers also resent wanting to provide all the data they requested. While a user may do something to protect their data privacy, not all customers are onboard of providing such immense and detailed information when opening a bank. The more time they drag the customer into increased hurdles and places demands before genuine users, the more the abandonment rates. The expense of abandonment of a bank or an entity is far more than the expense of the perpetrated scam.

But there is great news for everyone and anyone. The rising number of banks and financial technologies are uncovering how to perform customer due diligence digitally and, if necessary, then perform enhanced due diligence digitally. This increases the user experience and reduces the user abandonment rate. Businesses must adopt technologies that assist them rather than useless technologies that provide them no benefits. Customer due diligence in banking is the future of the financial world, and that is what really matters.