Encompass will showcase its innovative Know Your Customer (KYC) solution at this week’s A-Team Group RegTech Summit for Capital Markets in London. The solution automates KYC processes, provides simultaneous, real-time access to multiple sources of global company and person data, and uses robotic search to fulfil firms’ KYC requirements.
Ahead of the event, we talked to Mahesh Jugoo, senior manager, business development at Encompass, about the company’s views on RegTech and how it could lighten the burden of regulatory compliance.
Q: What does RegTech mean to you?
A: RegTech is all about helping firms manage their compliance needs in a manner that is scalable and saves time, money and resource.
Q: What problem does the financial institution have that you believe you can solve?
A: The way financial institutions conduct KYC checks is not always the most efficient. It often involves large amounts of people making manual checks, and it can be time consumptive and expensive.
Q: Why do firms have this problem?
A: In essence there are two reasons: the large amount of legislation that has been passed in recent years; and the effect that this legislation has in terms of showing that legacy systems and databases that are in place are often not fit for purpose to manage new regulatory requirements.
Q: What regulations are of primary concern to you and your customers?
A: Of most concern to our customers are regulations around Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter Terrorism Financing (CTF). While there have been laws for years, they have been ratcheted up a notch by the 3rd Money Laundering Directive in 2005, and its most recent iteration, the 4th Money Laundering Directive (AML4), which was transposed into UK law through the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, passed in June of this year.
Q: How do you solve it?
A: We realised that the vast bulk of KYC checks can be completed by automating the process, meaning there is only very minimal human interaction. As well as being cheaper and faster than a human carrying out the process, automation has benefits such as ensuring that policy is executed in the same manner in every occurrence. It also generates an audit trail, which is necessary to ensure compliance with AML4.
Q: What technology do you use?
A: We use robotic process automation (RPA) that runs customers’ policies against their usual suite of data providers to give them the information they require.
Q: How do you fit into a financial institutions architecture and data flows?
A: We use a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technology that can be accessed either through a web browser or application programming interface (API).
Q: What other cool RegTech companies have you seen out there?
A: All our information providers are cool!
Q: Why are you taking part in the A-Team RegTech Summit for Capital Markets event?
A: As well as the opportunity to show off our cool tech, we’re always keen to meet up with experts in the field with whom we can share information and views. RegTech is such a fast-moving industry that it’s possible for developments to leave you behind. At Encompass, we’re proud to be at the very forefront of the field, but we’d never take that place for granted.
Q: What type of people are you hoping to meet at the Summit?
A: Vendors and industry experts. Anyone with a view on artificial intelligence (AI), RPA, automation or cool tech.
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