The increasing cost and complexity of managing compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) legislation and regulatory requirements around the globe is a significant burden. This challenge is exacerbated by the inflexibilities of legacy systems. As a result, enterprises are looking for new ways to help them onboard new customers as quickly and efficiently as possible.
A typical AML risk mitigation process for onboarding a new customer can take up to a week or more.  Here’s what the typical process looks like:

1. Prospective new customer enters a branch
2. Sitting with the prospect, the Banker fills out the prospect’s information into a paper Know Your Customer (KYC) form
3. When the prospect leaves and the Banker has time, the Banker enters the data collected on the paper KYC form into their computer
4. The Banker then waits 1-2 days for the prospect to be risk scored
5. Based on this prospect’s risk score, a Customer Due Diligence Onboarding alert is generated for the BSA/AML team
6. The alert is then manually assigned by the team Manager to a specific analyst for investigation
7. It can take 1-5 days for the alert to be investigated and dispositioned
8. Once the investigation is complete, in this case the prospect is cleared and the BSA/AML team manually sends the approval to the Banker
9. The Banker onboards the new customer

This lengthy process can be frustrating for customers and bankers alike. One way to improve the efficiency of the AML investigative process is to provide AML analysts with a holistic view of activity for a subject in question all on one screen. This enables analysts to make better decisions more quickly, cutting down the time spent on investigation.

Another way to streamline the investigative process, is to provide a flexible workflow that an organization can easily tailor to their process, on their own, without having to go back and forth on changes with a software vendor. In addition, having integrated access to high quality data source providers for real time identity verification, for example, is another way to save time and make the investigative process more efficient. As is having an effective, easy to use link analysis tool built-into the AML investigative case management system.

Guardian Analytics Evidence Lake™ Customer Due Diligence (CDD) provides all of this and more. Evidence Lake CDD helps organizations more easily and cost effectively onboard new customers by streamlining the risk assessment and investigative processes. Specifically, Evidence Lake CDD accelerates Know Your Customer (KYC) form entry, reduces customer onboarding time, and enables better management of higher risk customers.

Unlike many other AML solutions, Evidence Lake CDD is Cloud-based, providing a wealth of agility not available in on-premise solutions. With Evidence Lake CDD, AML teams have the ability to shorten the investigative and submission process from weeks to days, and even sometimes same-day disposition.

With Evidence Lake CDD, the KYC form is dynamic, customizable, and easy to use, which significantly reduces data entry time and risk of transcription errors. It includes an easily configurable, dynamic workflow, and questions can be quickly added at any time. Attachments are simple to drag and drop into the KYC form and mandatory fields are clearly highlighted. Risk factors are color coded for efficient review.

Team leaders can see the impact of rule or policy changes before they are pushed live into production. Evidence Lake CDD also offers integration with premier data source providers for real time identity verification. With one click, the Multi-channel Link Analysis identifies all beneficial owners, ultimate beneficial owners (“UBO”), controlling parties, and ownership percentages related to your subject. Multi-channel Link Analysis also reveals signers, transactions, and other metadata related to each related person/entity. This dramatically reduces investigation time (as much as 1 to 3 hours per investigation), freeing up investigators for higher value activities.

Using Evidence Lake CDD, the streamlined onboarding process can take as little as one day:

1. Prospective new customer enters a branch
2. The Banker fills out the prospect’s KYC information directly into the application
3. Real-time risk rating is conducted on the KYC submission
4. Based on this prospect’s risk score, a Customer Due Diligence Onboarding alert is generated for the BSA/AML team immediately
5. Customer Due Diligence Onboarding alert is auto-assigned by the application
6. The alert is investigated in 1-2 days with built-in link analysis, simple workflow, integration with premium data source providers, etc.
7. An auto-notification is sent to the Banker if the customer is approved
8. The Banker onboards the new customer

In short, with Evidence Lake CDD organizations can automate tasks, create a seamless workflow, and let analysts see everything they need to disposition a case from a single screen. Evidence Lake CDD is the solution organizations need to enhance their new customer onboarding process and gain the speed and flexibility they need to effectively and efficiently comply with AML regulations and guidance.