About a-team Marketing Services
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

Upcoming Webinar: Generative and Agentic AI in Financial Markets: What the Data Really Shows

Date: 15 October 2026 Time: 10:00am ET / 3:00pm London / 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 minutes Artificial intelligence is reshaping financial markets – but the reality on the ground is more nuanced, more uneven, and more instructive than the headlines suggest. A new A-Team Insight research programme, drawing on responses from senior AI decision-makers at...

BLOG

CFTC’s Selig Sets Out Agenda for Leaner Rules and Faster Markets

Michael Selig has placed derivatives regulation at the centre of the US competitiveness agenda, using his keynote at the ISDA annual meeting to call for a more proportionate rulebook, deeper SEC and CFTC alignment, and a clearer path for innovation in swaps, clearing, tokenised collateral and market structure. He framed the CFTC’s task as keeping...

EVENT

Eagle Alpha Alternative Data Conference, Fall, New York, hosted by A-Team Group

Now in its 8th year, the Eagle Alpha Alternative Data Conference managed by A-Team Group, is the premier content forum and networking event for investment firms and hedge funds.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2026

AI adoption in capital markets has moved into a more disciplined phase. The priority is now controlled deployment: where AI can be used safely, where it can deliver measurable value, and how outputs can be governed, monitored and evidenced. The 2026 edition of the AI in Capital Markets Handbook examines how AI is being applied...