The latest technology news in the wealth management sector from around the world.

Kyckr, Blacksmith KYC
With financial crime on the rise, Kyckr, the corporate know-your-customer company and Blacksmith KYC, the RegTech venture of ING Bank, have partnered to give Blacksmith’s clients access to Kyckr's real-time data retrieval and registry connections. This aims to simplify onboarding and reviewing processes that would otherwise take months, the firm said in a statement. 

The data allows companies to understand their customers and suppliers better, minimising exposure to commercial risk, preventing financial crime such as money laundering, and ensuring regulatory compliance, the firm continued. 

Blacksmith, which has policy digitalisation as the core of its solution, said it offers ING Bank and its other clients a single platform to digitalise and automatically apply their policy requirements in the KYC process, collect the relevant data from the sources they trust, and deliver standardised and actionable customer due diligence files. 

With their DataHub and Digital Policy Manager, Blacksmith aims to half its efforts to create CDD files, and enable its clients to stay compliant with changing regulations. 

Nynke Postma, CEO of Blacksmith, said: "Our integration with Kyckr gives our clients access to real-time data from over 300 primary regulated sources. Rather than manually collecting and processing large amounts of data from a large variety of data sources, they can now focus their efforts on risk analysis.”

Ian Henderson, CEO of Kyckr, added: "Partnering with Blacksmith means a more integrated solution for businesses that want to verify the provenance of their customers and suppliers – while at the same time streamlining their onboarding process. There’s greater awareness today across all sectors that KYC isn’t just for regulated businesses.” 

“It is essential to risk management and wise data-led decision making. Our API enables greater integration and automation across the RegTech industry, which is good for legitimate businesses and bad for financial criminals," he said.