FINANCIAL HOUSE’S BUSINESS PROFILE
Financial House is a UK-based FinTech payment gateway and service provider. It operates an agent principle. The network of agents accesses fully regulated white-label services, which can be offered to corporate clients around the world.
THE BUSINESS CASE
Financial House operates a complex compliance process, which works in numerous jurisdictions, covers corporate onboarding and ongoing risk monitoring, and it has several human touch points.
Its agent network provides the first line of defence in its compliance process. Then Financial House completes its risk monitoring plan by reviewing information supplied by the agents.
The firm needed a method to automate KYB checks and orchestrate the process for different teams involved in due diligence. It needed access to accurate KYB data to assess risk at onboard and during ongoing monitoring. And, it wanted a central repository for customer documentation so teams could access it easily and on-demand.
Under the stewardship of a new money laundering reporting officer (MLRO), Metkel Asfaha, Financial House restructured its compliance function, employing new staff, creating new policies, and introducing a new coordinated RegTech system. There were existing compliance processes, but the MLRO wanted to align the function, bringing together automated onboarding, risk classification and assessment, and ongoing monitoring in PassFort.
THE SOLUTION
In September 2020, Financial House began work on a systems integration project, which included customer onboarding and ongoing risk monitoring.
Orchestrated KYB
Financial House has a very specific onboarding process for the companies it is doing due diligence on, tasks can become complicated quickly. PassFort handles this complexity while alleviating manual effort involved in due diligence and risk management.
Now Financial House’s teams don’t need to launch checks, chase down documents, or update them in certain folders. This happens online in PassFort.
PassFort has automated the firm’s complex corporate onboarding and ongoing monitoring processes. And the solution brings agents and analysts into the compliance process where they add value to review cases or to make risk-based decisions.
Integrated data
To satisfy KYB data checks, PassFort integrated Creditsafe into Financial House’s compliance process. And for its sanctions and adverse media screening, PassFort integrated Dow Jones. As a result of working with PassFort, future savings can now be realised by removing a duplicate data source used in the screening process.
Excellent record keeping
Previously, KYB documents would have been saved in servers by Financial House. Now, agents rely on PassFort to store and access customer documentation.
All KYB documents are kept in one place – they are saved in PassFort. Anybody needing information knows it’s in the platform, and they know how and where to get it.
METKEL ASFAHA, FINANCIAL HOUSE’S MLRO, SAYS
“PassFort has made our whole process much easier to follow, it automates key tasks, and it also acts as a central repository for customer documentation.”
“The reason Financial House chose to partner with PassFort was because we needed a solution that allowed us to manage very complex KYB and corporate onboarding activity.
PassFort has made our whole process much easier to follow. It automates key tasks and also acts as a central repository for customer documentation.
Of real significance to Financial House was PassFort’s ability to perform ongoing monitoring of corporate clients, allowing us to carry out ongoing risk assessment after set periods of time, depending on the level of risk, while refreshing key documents.
As a Head of Financial Crime and MLRO, PassFort allows me to input into the platform all the necessary requirements for the specific type of business we are onboarding and then we get a risk assessment, which means we can construct ongoing monitoring for the long-term. All this is done seamlessly on the platform. Once we set up what our requirements are, our users have a much easier task when it comes to checking documents and making decisions.
I’ve worked in other businesses where the onboarding process is done manually, and I can tell you the difference PassFort makes from a compliance analysts’ perspective in terms of work requirements.
While we have been dealing with many changes and new systems as an organisation, my experience is that PassFort has been one of the few things it has been easy to deal with. In terms of responses, support, every time we have a query, the integration – everyone has been supportive. If we send out emails, we get responses in minutes and that doesn’t happen with other partners.”
Get in touch
No matter the complexity of the challenge you’re facing or what you want to achieve in your KYC / KYB process, PassFort can tailor an automated compliance solution for you, one that brings in your team of experts at the points where they add most value.
They would love to talk to you and discuss your specific RegTech requirements, so please get in touch anytime and a member of the team will arrange a chat.