FreePint Launches New Series - What You Need to Know Your Customer (KYC)
Jinfo Blog

By Chris Porter

Abstract

FreePint is taking a fresh look at the ever-changing world of risk and compliance, with a particular focus on Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements. Chris Porter, co-producer of the series with Andrew Lucas, introduces the series.

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The world of risk and compliance continues to develop at a dizzying pace. Legal requirements to carry out appropriate "due diligence" checks into customers, suppliers, agents and other partners continue to proliferate.

The initial focus was on Know Your Customer (KYC) in order to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism, and the main early impact was on financial institutions. More recently, legislation to combat bribery and corruption - whether in the UK, US, Brazil, Singapore or elsewhere - has greatly extended the reach of KYC-type controls into the wider corporate world.

Increasing Enforcement Action

In parallel with a growing body of legislation, enforcement action is becoming noticeably more vigorous. Investigations by regulatory bodies are becoming more frequent and fines for non-compliance are being very prominently reported.

Also, interest in KYC now goes beyond the strict regulatory requirements. In the context of global business, knowing who your suppliers, customers and agents are has become good general business practice.

In this environment, it is no surprise that avoiding the financial and reputational impact of a compliance breach is a key topic in many board rooms.

Changing Vendor Landscape

The early information vendors in this space began to come to prominence over a decade ago. In recent years, a number of them have been consolidated into the risk and compliance units of much larger organisations - World-Check into the Thomson Reuters Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) business, WorldCompliance into LexisNexis Risk Solutions - just as many of the related software players have been absorbed into major technology conglomerates.

At the same time, newer vendors are emerging and are offering alternatives, often at attractive price points, to both existing and new customers of KYC and anti-bribery solutions.

FreePint Topic Series: What You Need to Know Your Customer (KYC)

FreePint took a detailed look at risk and compliance data through the Topic Series: Compliance in Context in late 2013. Content included a wide range of material in the form of articles, product reviews, checklists and webinars. And FreePint has continued to touch on issues of interest to compliance professionals since.

In this new series, coverage is scheduled to include:

• An overview of major compliance-related surveys from the first half of 2014, including key findings on topics such as budget trends, resource issues and attitudes to outsourcing
  
  
• An overview of KYC workflow requirements, from major global risk solutions vendor LexisNexis
  
  
• A Q&A with prominent global risk data and news vendor Dow Jones, looking at current trends in the marketplace and company priorities relating to risk and compliance content and workflow
  
  
• A look at helpful free blog resources for tracking compliance issues such as KYC
  
  
• A product review of regulatory monitoring service Reg-Track, from up-and-coming US-based vendor Reg-Room LLC
  
  
• An examination of when an organisation should switch from carrying out their own KYC checks in-house to using a commercial subscription service or contracting the activity out to a third party
  
  
• A Q&A with fast-growing US-based risk intelligence database and outsourcing services provider RDC, which has recently extended its reach through the opening of a European office in London.

Editor's Note

This article is part of the FreePint Topic Series: What You Need to Know Your Customer (KYC) running from July-September 2014 which includes articles, reviews and expert tips. Register your interest now, and you'll also get a free PDF report with selected premium articles when it's published in September.

If there are any other compliance-related topics which would be of interest to you, please contact us at chris.porter@freepint.com or andrew.lucas@freepint.com.

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