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Those who have been in tech for awhile know the drill of sharing impressive growth numbers each quarter. In particular, as long as the new customer metric was going up and to the right, all appeared to be well. But were all of these new customers actually new and real people at that? The ability to verify business data is no longer a nice to have for companies not subject to complying with Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) regulations — it’s an imperative for survival and sustainable growth.
In this TechCrunch+ webinar, Jeff Sakasegawa, Trust and Safety Architect at Persona, Hunter Spinks, Head of Product at Bond, Anzar Dewani, BSA/AML Officer at Bond, and Alex Yen, Head of Growth at Persona, shared why KYC and KYB aren’t just the job of compliance teams, but rather the result of a tight partnership between compliance and product that ultimately leads to better onboarding experiences and sparks customer loyalty.
Here are some of the key questions answered during the webinar:
How can collaboration between product and compliance be turned into a competitive advantage?
“I think pretty much any product manager that's worked in the high compliance field has made this mistake at one point in their career, where they've gone down the path of defining a product. They've designed it, they've gotten it all ready, you're going through your launch review and then you loop in compliance and it's, oh my gosh, we need to go back to the drawing board, start from scratch,” Hunter said.
“And I think the one thing that is really important … is when you conceive of your products from the beginning with compliance in mind, when you're working in that partnership from the beginning, you don't run into those disastrous prelaunch reviews, but you also can take compliance and turn it from just a box you need to check and turn it into a competitive advantage.”
What does it mean to take a ‘risk-based’ approach to KYC and KYB?
“First you need to understand what your risks are, “Anzar said. “Before we even say, ‘Okay, we need to collect this for KYC, this is what we need for KYB,’ first understand what the risk is by not collecting certain information. What product are you offering? What geography are you operating in? What are the risks that come with offering that product in that geography? Okay, great, here are the risks that we have outlined and here are the mitigating controls that we're going to put in place.
“A KYC flow does not have to be the same across the board for every single fintech out there. While the requirements for CIP [customer identification program] are set, KYC, KYB is your risk-based approach.”
Why is it critical for compliance and product teams to engage throughout the product life cycle?
“One of the key items that we want to make sure that everyone takes away, is start talking to your compliance and product teams before, during, and after implementation. See what works, see what didn't work. You're not going to get it right on the first try — compliance is evolving,” Anzar shared. “That keeps the program growing, that keeps our brains going, that keeps the talking going.”
To watch the full webinar, click here.
