Blanco launches anti-money laundering module for large and small financial companies
More and more financial companies, from VC funds to crypto providers, have to comply with stricter anti-money laundering legislation. To help companies comply with these laws and regulations, fintech scale-up Blanco launches an entry-level model of its KYC & Compliance Suite: KYC Essential. This pay-as-you-use solution makes the Know Your Customer module even more accessible to large and small businesses.
With Blanco’s KYC & Compliance Suite, data from business relations, such as prospects and clients of the financial enterprise, can be easily retrieved and checked. This retrieval and verification of data is a requirement of anti-money laundering legislation, which applies to an increasing number of companies including asset managers, crypto providers and Venture Capital funds. With this regulation, the EU hopes to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing. Blanco’s solutions are now being used by 125 financial institutions in six European countries.
Complex legislation not considered urgent everywhere
Joost Walgemoed, CEO of Blanco, is concerned that not every European financial company has yet realised how urgent this legislation is. “AML legislation, as implemented for example in the Netherlands by the Wwft, is complex for many companies. Complying with the legislation can be costly, because it can require a lot of manual work. Technology therefore makes the difference. Our solution automates KYC processes. Blanco KYC Essential enables financial companies to work plug-and-play with the KYC Suite, where they only pay for what they use. This makes compliance with legislation and regulations scalable and cost-efficient for all types of financial enterprises. After all, we believe in the symbiosis between man and machine. Technology makes processes more efficient and cheaper. That gives financial companies more time to focus on their customers.”
Continuous monitoring to be compliant
Blanco’s KYC Essential enables financial companies to continuously monitor relationships, for example, to check whether they are on a sanctions list or appear in negative publicity. Both natural persons and legal entities can be onboarded and monitored through the KYC platform. The process can be done together with the relationship or entirely online.
“The online variant is, in connection with the COVID-19 measures, now particularly relevant. With these turn-key solutions, companies that still check their customer data using Excel sheets, for example, immediately take a step towards compliance. The fact that the system works via a pay-as-you-use principle makes the solution accessible to even more companies. If they want to use our more advanced solution in the future, it’s very simple,” says Walgemoed.
