smartKYC: An automated semantic engine for KYC and AML due diligence

The Big Problem A key issue for many financial institutions these days is: Who is their client. With more regulation than ever before, anti money laundering (AML) and compliance are now the priorities for any financial institution, with their profitability as only a secondary concern. This need for heightened due diligence, partnered with a seemingly

The Big Problem

A key issue for many financial institutions these days is: Who is their client. With more regulation than ever before, anti money laundering (AML) and compliance are now the priorities for any financial institution, with their profitability as only a secondary concern.

This need for heightened due diligence, partnered with a seemingly never-ending list of online news and data sources, has made the KYC process a very long and, in some cases, almost impossible task.

More fines are being issued and thousands of KYC analysts and consultants are being hired to work on this colossal yet vital onboarding issue.

This is not a problem that will go away, nor will it get any easier.

The Solution

With smartKYC, we’ve automated as much of the search and filtering process as possible, leaving the analyst more time to investigate who the client really is and not having to spend all their time searching news sources and structured databases.

How

Using a highly advanced multilingual semantic search engine, smartKYC allows you to perform one single search that automatically generates all name variants and aliases in the required languages.

With this spread of permutations now generated, a search is launched on all the sources your firm currently uses and any red flags are highlighted by finding key phrases and words within the results.

smartKYC allows you to intelligently compare the results from your firm’s various news and database subscriptions, adding more texture and colour to the KYC report, whilst eliminating the chance of missing a vital piece of the puzzle, something which can easily be overlooked with a manual search.

What is Semantic Search?

Semantic searches seek to improve search accuracy by understanding searcher intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable dataspace, whether on the Web or within a closed system, to generate more relevant results.

The benefits of using an advanced semantic search for AML due diligence is more evident than ever before with the growth of online information. Whereas in the past we have been used to keywords, this will only get you so far. A more intelligent and deeper search is now required to filter through the numerous documents online.

For example:

Searching John Doe and Criminal could return numerous results, where there is no relationship to John Doe being a criminal, only that both words were mentioned in the same document. With smartKYC we look at the structure of sentences and how elements relate to each other. Therefore, we only flag up items referring to John Doe as a criminal.

This semantic intelligence has been broken down into categories so you can filter documents relating to your target for Sanctions, PEPs, Legal Issues, Adverse Media, Source of Wealth and Biographical information.