Cynopsis Solutions UK Limited

The Challenge

For a significant majority of small and medium sized asset management firms, Know Your Customer (KYC) is a labour-intensive, highly manual and time-consuming part of compliance. Few firms have the necessary headcount, resources and expertise to deal effectively and efficiently with the increasing KYC requirements not just at the point of client onboarding but ongoing throughout the client relationship. Many also struggle simply to keep up with the pace of regulatory change and the updates to their KYC processes required.

These challenges are exacerbated by the heightened scrutiny regulators are now placing on KYC as part of a greater political focus on countering terrorist funding and anti-money laundering. Regulatory enforcement is becoming ever more stringent and fines increasingly punitive, meaning it is increasingly urgent for firms to find a reliable, cost- effective solution that is scalable and future-proofs them for greater regulatory focus on KYC.

The Solution

Cynopsis Solutions’ Artemis software uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to effectively and accurately assess large numbers of country, customer, product/service and business activities risks quickly and securely, meaning that only those flagged as an elevated risk are passed on to compliance teams for manual review. This is particularly appealing for smaller firms with less extensive in-house compliance teams.

It automates the customer KYC onboarding process and is capable of integrating with firm’s front-end form via API. It works by categorising customers into low, medium and high risk where low risk customers will be auto-cleared.

If there are screening hits or medium/high risk, the case will go into pending for level 2 or 3 users to do a manual review. For every case, there will be ongoing due diligence triggers and a detailed report with audit trails of users’ actions.

Artemis provides a complete e-KYC solution from ID verification, due diligence and record keeping through to ongoing monitoring and suspicious transactions reporting.

The Importance

Regulatory requirements, the nature of customers’ businesses, risk assessment and screening obligations are all becoming increasingly complex. The reputation risk and punitive financial implications of getting it wrong are significant. As a result we are finding that many asset managers are looking for a solution that provides the much-needed automation in customer on-boarding, KYC, AML/CTF risk assessment, screening and documentation processes. Artemis helps tackle these regulatory pain points in a simple, cost-effective and secure way.