What has been improved in the new version of our KYC Suite?
Our complete banking platform, as we envisioned it at the start of Blanco in 2015, is finally live! Read our press release here. Note that at Blanco, we’re working according to the agile development method. That means our platform is never finished: based on feedback from our users, we’re constantly making improvements to our software. Since our KYC Suite has already been used by around 45 asset managers for some time, we’ve been able to make significant improvements, based on user feedback, as the agile development method dictates. We’re quite proud of the fact that with this new release, our KYC Suite has matured from a so-called first ‘Minimal Viable Product’ to advanced software taking care of all things KYC. We’d love to share some improvements that we deployed.
First, we discovered that we made too many assumptions in the part of the software where the financial position of the client is ascertained. We had defined a source of income list ourselves. Nevertheless, a specific user wanted to be able to select a field ‘rental income’, but he couldn’t: it wasn’t in the option list. You should understand that it’s impossible for us to comply to every single request. If we’d do that, every platform would become tailor-made, which simply is way too costly to be profitable.
That is why, in close consultation with our users, we decided to completely abandon the ‘hard-coded’ list of sources of income. As an asset manager, you can now determine the source of income categories yourself. Much more convenient, of course!
This request, alongside other user-feedback, made us realize that flexibility of our platform is extremely important. From now on, we will always ask ourselves: Should we make a ‘hard’ decision on the exact content and usage of the functionality at hand, or should we leave this open for the user to decide? This has also helped us to let go of the strict step-by-step order, in which the Client Onboaridng procedure had to be completed, for example. In the new version of the Cient Oboarding Module, you can start at any step you like: you and your client will no longer be ‘pushed’ into a standard procedure – you’re able to go through our onboarding procedure just as you like.
Another example of the flexibility of our platform is the new ‘flags’ functionality in the KYC Suite. An asset manager using our platform shared with us that he wanted to filter out clients who are investing more than 500,000 euros, because he treats those clients differently. Other asset managers don’t this need at all, and yet others want to do the same with clients investing more than 1 million euros, etc.. To solve this problem, we’ve introduced the ‘flag’ system: each user can now decide for himself when and how he gets a notification. The earlier mentioned asset manager can install a ‘flag’ at the ‘initial deposit field’, accompanied by the rule that a notification should be sent if the amount exceeds 500,000 euros. Another user can choose to do the same, but for a different amount and a third user may not install a flag at all with this field.
These are all examples that are illustrative of how we’re constantly trying to improve our banking platform for asset managers. If you’ve got any suggestions for improvement or if you’d like to share other feedback with us, please do not hesitate to contact us: you can rely on the fact that we’re focussed on your user experience 100% and that we take any feedback super-serious.
