Financial institutions today have access to vast amounts of customer information, often more than they can process efficiently. While meeting compliance requirements drives the adoption of advanced database searches and risk evaluation tools across the United States and globally, comprehensive digital solutions deliver benefits that go well beyond regulatory adherence. These tools streamline your workflows, organize and secure data, assess risk, and accelerate onboarding processes.
Here are five ways your financial institution can accelerate onboarding:
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| 1. Integrating PII validation with expanded due diligence |
| 2. Making onboarding flexible to you |
| 3. Adopting broader risk assessment |
| 4. Balancing customer experience and fraud protection |
| 5. Being ready for future regulatory changes |
1. Integrating PII validation with expanded due diligence
Fraud defense technology has advanced most dramatically in onboarding over recent years, driven by AI’s rapid expansion of fraud capabilities at scale. AI-powered fraud schemes now bypass even live biometric measures that represented cutting-edge technology just years ago.
Technology that deepens identity verification and extends know-your-customer (KYC) standards beyond basic compliance helps organizations catch signals that compliance-only approaches miss. However, the verification technology we rely on to validate personally identifiable information (PII) can quickly become outdated.
Third-party providers help organizations maintain current fraud defense capabilities through managed onboarding partnerships. Comprehensive data search tools like CLEAR enable organizations to laterally search all PII elements, adding investigative power to all aspects of matching and verification.
2. Making onboarding flexible to you
Financial institutions can reap the benefits of newer low-code onboarding solutions that can be created, modified, and managed with minimal coding knowledge. CLEAR, for example, has add-in solutions that are user-friendly and flexible in ways to implement change without needing to replace an institution’s legacy systems. And platforms like Alloy and Hummingbird offer integrable workflows that can combine with CLEAR to offer deeper customization for every financial institution.
Flexibility is key, and therefore, your institution needs onboarding tools that solve today’s problems and adapt to tomorrow’s challenges.
3. Adopting broader risk assessment
Start your enhanced due diligence by examining what information new applicants provide to your institution. PII often contains untapped intelligence, and medium- to high-risk customers warrant broader investigation.
Your bank’s current verification methods may meet regulatory compliance standards while limiting search capabilities. Comprehensive database search services like CLEAR deliver unconventional intelligence through broader search capabilities and worldwide adverse media screening a systematic risk assessment approach that searches published information, eliminates inefficient manual search engine use, and returns results from sources worldwide
These tools can provide information on an applicant’s third- and fourth-degree associations and can handle queries about addresses, the applicant’s industry and business history, and their previous locations of residence or business, all of which is potentially valuable information that isn’t strictly about authenticating their identity.
4. Balancing customer experience and fraud protection
For many customers, the speed and flexibility of the onboarding process are crucial, as it’s often their first experience with the bank. Most non-automated new account applications are legitimate, and a smooth user experience is paramount. Fast-tracking legitimate applications while preventing fraud is a key goal, but it can be challenging.
Financial institutions need to find a balance between the frictionless transaction standards that are strongly desired by customers today and the level of due diligence banks need to ensure they’re doing their best to prevent fraud. You need to carefully choose which elements of screening suit your institution best too many steps, and customers will turn elsewhere.
To that end, your institution’s risk management and compliance professionals can use advanced digital tools to improve rather than weigh down the onboarding process for themselves and, most importantly, for the end user.
5. Being ready for future regulatory changes
Next-generation onboarding screening requires understanding the fast-changing world of identity fraud and money laundering, and one key benefit of engaging with an integrated digital intelligence partner like CLEAR is a quicker ability to adjust to evolving regulations.
For example, cryptocurrency is on its way towards integration into the financial sector, and regulations are in flux; and AI deployment is mature enough now that it will soon be subject to regulations both in the US and abroad. And right behind that, quantum computing could bring some major challenges to the encryption that supports current digital authentication and protects your data.
Is your financial institution ready for all these changes?
Going beyond what is needed
Going beyond what is strictly needed for regulatory compliance pays dividends to any financial institution and their customers. For example, victims of identity fraud may not even know their identities or accounts have been compromised and are being used in fraud schemes. With advanced screening tools, you’ll be helping them while protecting your organization’s bottom line.
Further, accelerated onboarding can also free your technology team to focus on valuable opportunities and better customer service rather than just spending their time defending against threats. New digital tools and AI-driven solutions can enhance and streamline the onboarding process, work within your existing security architecture, and offer your financial institution a way of better managing a critical work process.
Discover how integrating Thomson Reuters data and capabilities into your onboarding platform can transform your process, boosting efficiency, strengthening security, and ensuring compliance. Take the next step toward seamless onboarding today.
Disclaimer
Thomson Reuters is not a consumer reporting agency, and none of its services or the data contained therein constitute a ‘consumer report’ as such term is defined in the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), 15 U.S.C. sec. 1681 et seq. The data provided to you may not be used as a factor in consumer debt collection decisioning, establishing a consumer’s eligibility for credit, insurance, employment, government benefits, or housing, or for any other purpose authorized under the FCRA. By accessing one of our services, you agree not to use the service or data for any purpose authorized under the FCRA or in relation to taking an adverse action relating to a consumer application.
