In an increasing unpredictable compliance environment, Trulioo is giving companies confidence and control of their IDV. It’s creating new business opportunities in an uncertain world, says Hal Lonas Whether you’re a financial institution, big corporate or SME, staying on the right side of compliance when it comes to screening new and existing clients and suppliers is becoming increasingly hazardous, especially if you operate in multiple jurisdictions. It’s not helped that since the sanctions curtain came down on Russia, governments opposed to its invasion of Ukraine have been moving the regulatory pieces at different speeds across the geopolitical board. What looks like a legitimate business relationship one minute could prove a toxic mistake the next. At last count (May), there were, for instance, 148 Russian-linked entities and 1,255 individuals whom the UK government alone had made subject of asset freezes. That included manufacturing companies, research institutes, banks and insurers, among others. Breaching financial sanctions in relation to any one of those carries a maximum prison sentence of seven years or a fine (or both) – not to mention the reputational damage of being publicly excoriated for indirectly supporting ‘Putin’s war’. With the economic thumbscrews
being applied to major international companies and smaller entities alike, banks could perhaps be forgiven for taking a low/no-risk approach to onboarding SMEs, especially as they have historically been more expensive to service, anyway. Hal Lonas, chief technology officer for global identity verification (IDV) platform Trulioo says that needn’t be the case if they let a third-party specialist pipe in the technology that ensures real-time and comprehensive know your customer and know your business verification – in its case, drawing from both structured and unstructured data way beyond the reach of most internal compliance teams. Trulioo’s data comes from 450-plus data sources in around 195 countries, and, thanks to the company’s recent acquisition of HelloFlow, it can now be offered to customers with a no-code tool so they can bespoke how that information is used in-house, further reducing the cost of customer acquisition. HelloFlow’s no-code, drag-and-drop solution for customer onboarding, will dovetail with Trulioo’s existing proprietary tools – GlobalGateway, eIDV, KYB and DocV – to assist in both individual and business ID verification to provide a single, holistic IDV platform aimed at saving financial institutions time, money and, potentially, penalties. So, far from retreating from sections of the business community that might have been seen as too difficult to serve because of KYB limitations, the technology can unlock opportunities, says Lonas.
“More and more, the smallest company looks the same as the biggest company; you need to know where they’re doing business, the problems that they’re solving,” he says. If financial institutions can overcome the onboarding hurdle, then digital enablement will drive the conversion of that business to them. “A lot of financial institutions looked at SMEs before and said ‘do I want to do business with a smaller company? Is it worth the investment to get them on board?’,” says Lonas. “Now, with that particular friction point going away, they can look at SMEs as the new greenspace opportunity. With onboarding costs lower, they can afford to really serve SMEs with a much wider range of solutions.”
A tricky balance: If they can reduce the cost of compliance, banks might look more favourably on SMEs
Risk&reward europe.money2020.com
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