Melissa UK Team | United Kingdom

It is an inescapable fact that for effective Identity verification, and therefore KYC and AML compliance, financial services companies need to access billions of records in real-time to ensure adequate checks are made while onboarding a new customer, and deliver that all-important smooth customer experience.

The issue is, if you are a financial services organisation with a global reach the types of information available to carry out effective KYC checks differ between countries. Outside of passport information, states often take different approaches to the types and range of information they collect and store on their citizens; whether they are on ID cards, driving licenses, or a registry of home ownership. Also needed to be factored in is that some countries, such as Germany, have more stringent privacy laws than others on accessing data on their citizens; sometimes making it difficult to obtain valuable information. Then, of course, the way contact details such as addresses are formatted around the world varies, which can create headaches when it comes to the know-your-customer process.

As things stand, those in financial services find themselves using different local data sources in each country for ID verification, meaning the entire process at a global level lacks any consistency, and more often than not, quality, impact best practice and compliance in KYC and AML checks which involves PEP and Sanctions screening.

You can find more about what are AML checks here.

In an ideal world, there would be one access point that provides consistent, relevant data for global eIDV throughout the world.

Ideally, it needs to be a cloud-based solution that not only checks but helps enrich the customer data, and will easily integrate across all systems and technologies. It will also need to be recognised by the regulators in financial services at a country, regional and global level.

Blockchain has the potential to play a role in the future as an ID verification access point, because of the way it operates in securely holding personal data. However, this will be a long way down the line as blockchain needs to build confidence in its use beyond the cryptocurrency sector. Also, before blockchain can be implemented it will need to be governed by the same level of compliance as experienced by everyone else who operates in the financial services space.

As technology improves and globalisation continues apace, in all likelihood there will be one global source to verify the identity in the future. Until we get to that point, with the digital identity marketplace evolving fast, it’s important for organisations in financial services to keep their finger on the pulse of developments in this sector, and ensure they source suppliers that provide the appropriate mix and volume of data, in real-time, for their global ID needs.

Find out more about what is identity verification here.

In the meantime, you can get in touch at info.uk@melissa.com or at 020 7718 0070 for additional information.