About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Refinitiv Details Ongoing Commitment to KYC and Fighting Financial Crime

Subscribe to our newsletter

Refinitiv is back on track following its decision to withdraw its KYC as a Service offering with plans to focus on its World Check, Media Check, Extended Due Diligence and recent partnership with Trulioo on digital entity solutions to meet customer needs for Know your Customer (KYC), due diligence and third-party risk management. The company will also release new solutions and updated versions of old solutions over the next six to 12 months, but declines to comment on whether any further products in the area of financial crime will be discontinued.

To catch up on Refinitiv’s decision on KYC as a Service (KYCaaS) and future plans, we talked to Phil Cotter, managing director of the risk business at Refinitiv. He says the company is winding down KYCaaS as customers need to move on to new solutions and Refinitiv sees opportunities to support them through other investments. He also notes the difficulties of standing up a successful KYC utility highlighted in a paper discussing the challenges of setting up a utility in Singapore.

Cotter comments: “We are still committed to helping customers with KYC, but in a way that is more meaningful to them as they move to fighting financial crime including KYC and onboarding.” He says customers are looking at new technologies and want to reduce cost, and need help bringing together technology and trusted data sources at scale. They also face Anti-Money Laundering (AML) challenges around crypto assets, an issue the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is expected to address in coming months with improved AML oversight.

Refinitiv added artificial intelligence and machine learning to some of its risk products last year, and will continue to implement these technologies in support of digitalisation. The company plans to build out digital KYC capabilities over the next 12 months, enhance onboarding and KYC through the Trulioo partnership, invest in its extended due diligence capability (EDD) and combine World Check with EDD to help customers manage risk in their supply chains. It will also continue to offer trusted entity data through Verified Entity Data as a Service, the former Avox entity data service.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: Best practice approaches to data management for regulatory reporting

Effective regulatory reporting requires firms to manage vast amounts of data across multiple systems, regions, and regulatory jurisdictions. With increasing scrutiny from regulators and the rising complexity of financial instruments, the need for a streamlined and strategic approach to data management has never been greater. Financial institutions must ensure accuracy, consistency, and timeliness in their...

BLOG

How to Build an Open Data Ecosystem: A Scheme Owner’s Guide

By Brendan Jones, Chief Operating Officer at Konsentus. When taking a scheme-based approach to building an Open Data ecosystem, it is the job of the scheme owner to define the standards, rules and operating procedures that participants sign up to. This means creating the scheme rulebook, processes and infrastructure requirements that underpin the Open Data...

EVENT

Data Management Summit New York City

Now in its 15th year the Data Management Summit NYC brings together the North American data management community to explore how data strategy is evolving to drive business outcomes and speed to market in changing times.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets: Practical Insight for a Transforming Industry – Free Handbook

AI is no longer on the horizon – it’s embedded in the infrastructure of modern capital markets. But separating real impact from inflated promises requires a grounded, practical understanding. The AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2025 provides exactly that. Designed for data-driven professionals across the trade life-cycle, compliance, infrastructure, and strategy, this handbook goes beyond...