CDI Case Study | EC Private Outreach

How ING is using EC Private Outreach

Streamline and simplify the Know Your Customer (KYC) process with EC Private Outreach. Standardizing KYC information requests, a win-win situation for customers and the bank.

Banks and other financial institutions have been designated as ‘gatekeepers’ in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing. Consequently, they must know exactly who they are doing business with. KYC has become a legal requirement. Banks are obliged to perform an extensive investigation into their customers, the Customer Due Diligence (CDD) before entering into a relationship with a customer and during this relationship. A costly and time-consuming process, which can also be extremely burdensome for corporate clients who have to comply with all the information requests that they receive from banks and other financial institutions.

As a bank, how can you organize this KYC/CDD process as efficiently and customer friendly as possible? How do you keep the KYC/CDD-related costs under control? How can you improve the KYC customer experience and unburden your customers in this area? We put these questions to Anthony van Vliet, Global Head KYC ING Wholesale Banking.

Streamline the client outreach

“An important part of the KYC/CDD process at every bank is requesting information from the customer; the ‘client outreach. It is in both the bank’s and the customer’s interest that this process takes place as smoothly, efficiently, and well-structured as possible. Moreover, this often concerns privacy-sensitive information that must be exchanged in a secure and responsible manner. This was the reason why, in 2017, ING started looking into how it could streamline this information gathering process as much as possible for both parties. Together with a sounding board of corporate clients, we soon came to the conclusion that enabling corporate clients to store and update their KYC information in a ‘central digital vault’ would be of real added value. For corporate clients and for the banks with whom they have a relationship or wish to enter into a relationship. A sort of ‘one-stop shop’ where corporate clients can store their KYC information in a well-structured manner and keep this information up to date. They can then share this information securely with all their banks for KYC/CDD purposes. This is how the idea for EC CoorpID came into being: a digital vault where corporate clients can safely store, structure, and share their KYC information with multiple banks.”

Create a win-win situation for both parties

“The degree in which a bank is capable of carrying out a well-structured and efficient CDD process, in which all regulations are complied with, will certainly contribute to the bank’s success and competitiveness. Further standardization and automation of processes is an important precondition to ensure an as efficient as possible KYC/CDD process for banks and their customers.”

“EC Private Outreach and EC CoorpID are now being rolled out in 14 European countries as part of ING’s KYC/CDD improvement journey for corporate clients. Customers that work with EC CoorpID are enthusiastic and we see that our customers are increasingly using EC CoorpID to share information with other banks as well. As more customers and banks start using EC Private Outreach and EC CoorpID, this could also contribute to the further standardization of KYC information requests. This would increase the predictability of the process for the customer. Only collecting and updating the information once and then sharing this information with multiple banks results in huge time savings and thus also lower costs for the customer. A win-win situation for both parties.”

Identifying and assessing risks

“Moreover, we see that the whole banking sector is being confronted with a huge shortage of KYC analysts. If you could streamline the whole data collection process and reduce the accompanying manual and repetitive tasks with EC Private Outreach, this would significantly cut back the KYC workload. KYC analysts would be able to focus more on their actual task: identifying and assessing risks and thus preventing misuse of the financial system for criminal purposes. This is the challenge that we are facing as gatekeepers now and in the future.”

EC Private Outreach and EC CoorpID

EC Private Outreach is a revolutionary solution that sets the standard for KYC outreach and corporate document exchange. Powered by the EC360 Corporate Digital Identity (CDI) platform, it solves the complex challenge of corporate client identification and verification and provides a unified, secure repository in EC CoorpID for corporate clients to easily structure and share documents across multiple entities with banks. 