The firm said that banks can be confident that their internal data is managed properly and being screened consistently by the new module.

smartKYC, the advanced enterprise solution for KYC due diligence automation, has launched a module called smartLISTS.

With smartLISTS, firms can manage or ingest their own lists of individuals or entities as they seek to handle internal watchlist data in the fight against financial crime. The module is in full production and used by financial institutions today.

While banks wish to screen these lists as a single, unified source, they still expect them to be appropriately segregated. smartLISTS allows firms to manage and update their own existing internal watchlists and develop new proprietary watchlists, which can in turn be used to match against future and existing clients for KYC screening, smartKYC said in a statement.

“smartKYC’s software already derives precise KYC intelligence from public (open web), professional (subscription) and private sources,” Dermot Corrigan, CEO of smartKYC, said. “With the addition of smartLISTS, banks can now feel confident that not only is their internal data being managed properly, with the appropriate level of security, partitioning and revision history, but also that they are being screened consistently.”  

The development of such a system comes amid a continued need for banks, wealth managers and other financial institutions to manage risks associated with KYC processes.

Hugo Chamberlain, COO of smartKYC said: “Each bank is different in its approach to KYC screening and although many will subscribe to the same paid KYC sources, internal lists by their very nature are unique to each bank. Having a user friendly and structured way to manage all the various internal lists is of the upmost importance.”

Internal lists can have more than one function; not just another watchlist of high-risk people and companies from a financial crime point of view, but they might itemise people and companies that are forbidden from a conflict-of-interest angle, a list which will be unique to each bank.

For example, one bank may wish to screen all its employees against a smartLIST of its vendors and vice versa. Through smartKYC’s network analysis of unstructured data on the web, it can find any mention of involvement with an employee and a specific vendor on that smartLIST, smartKYC said. 

In another example, a wealth manager may take the same approach by screening its client base against a smartLIST of prospective clients to see if there are any existing relationships and, on the positive side, see if there is potential for introductions by their clients.

smartLISTS also has the ability to schedule automatic deletions of contacts within internal lists for GDPR purposes, a feature that is frequently requested by smartKYC’s clients. This is in line with the General Data Protection Regulation which states that all firms must have a policy for montoring how long they can hold data on individuals.

Among other enhancements, last September smartKYC added the Hindi language and script to its multilingual natural language processing technology. This came at a time when advisors needed to obtain information from a raft of different language sources in order to stay on top of KYC workflows. The UK-based firm’s technology processes and analyses more than 35 different languages in writing systems including Latin, Chinese, Arabic and Devanagari.

See here for an article from the firm about “robo-onboarding.”