How to build a Know Your Business (KYB) process

Know Your Business (KYB) is the process of verifying a business and the people behind the business to determine if they’re legitimate and whether your organization should engage with them. In some industries, like finance and ecommerce, KYB is required by law. But even when it’s not required, it can help you identify and avoid fraudulent, sanctioned, or otherwise risky businesses.
The guide below outlines the KYB process, how it works in different industries and applications, and the main components of a KYB plan. We also offer step-by-step directions for building your own KYB process, best practices to keep in mind, and an evaluation framework for potential vendors and solutions.
What does the KYB process look like?
While requirements vary by country and regulation, KYB processes generally follow the same core steps:
1. Verify the business
Business verification involves vetting an organization to ensure it’s not a shell company, sanctioned entity, or otherwise fraudulent business. The goal here is to determine whether the business meets your compliance and fraud teams’ requirements.
To verify a business, you’ll need to collect information about it. At a minimum, this includes its business name, address, and registration number. Other relevant information may include its tax ID number, employer identification number (EIN), website URL, and industry code.
You’ll also need to collect and verify relevant business documentation. The specific documents required depend on the information you’re verifying and the level of assurance you need but may include:
Ownership documents: Ownership agreements, partnership agreements, trust agreements, etc.
Tax documents: Form W-8 ECI, Form W-9, IRS 147C Letter, IRS CP565 Letter, IRS CP575 Letter, etc.
Other corporate documents: Articles of incorporation, articles of organization, business registration certificate, statement of information, business licenses, annual reports, etc.
Common methods: Business document verification, database verification against issuing and authoritative registries like a Secretary of State (SOS) registry, sanctions and watchlist screenings
Keep in mind that this step might look different depending on the type of business you’re trying to verify. For example, sole proprietorships may not show up in authoritative data sources, requiring you to use other sources of information or verification methods.
2. Identify and verify the company’s ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs)
In addition to verifying the business, you also need to identify and verify the business’s ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs). According to FinCEN, a UBO is any person who either:
owns at least 25 percent of a business or controls 25 percent of its voting rights OR
exercises substantial control over a business, such as by making important decisions on behalf of the business
Note: While FinCEN uses a 25% ownership threshold, some organizations use a lower threshold, such as 20%, based on their risk tolerance and compliance requirements.
The Customer Due Diligence (CDD) Final Rule requires firms to verify beneficial ownership with a “reasonable belief.” Like business verification, the goal of UBO verification is to understand exactly who’s behind a business so you can determine whether you should engage with them.
In some countries, businesses are required to file information about their beneficial owners with a central government registry, which can often be queried for UBO verification.
The US Corporate Transparency Act sought to establish such a registry when it took effect in January 2024. However, a recent FinCEN rule removed this requirement for US companies and introduced other exemptions. As a result, UBO reporting in the US is self-reported. You’ll need the business to submit a document like a shareholder’s registry or articles of incorporation that identifies each beneficial owner and the percentage of equity they own. After identifying who the beneficial owners are, you can run standard Know Your Customer (KYC) checks on each individual.
Common methods: Database verification against UBO registries (when available), business document verification, government ID verification, sanctions and watchlist screenings, PEP screenings
3. Maintain updated customer information and continually monitor risk
Once you’ve verified the company and its main stakeholders are safe to work with, it’s important to conduct ongoing customer due diligence. Like KYC, KYB isn’t something you should only perform during onboarding. Situations change, so it’s important to continually check throughout their customer life cycle.
The CDD Final Rule requires covered institutions to “conduct ongoing monitoring to identify and report suspicious transactions and, on a risk basis, to maintain and update customer information.”
The goal of ongoing monitoring is to understand how a business’s (and/or its UBOs’) risk profile changes over time. This way, you can make an informed decision as to whether you should continue working with them.
Common methods: Transaction monitoring, sanctions and watchlist screenings, PEP screenings
What does a complete KYB check include?
Instead of treating business verification, UBO verification, and ongoing monitoring as discrete steps, a comprehensive KYB process connects them so information from each can inform the others.
If you identify risky signals during business verification, for example, you might decide to impose stricter KYC checks when verifying the organization’s UBOs, such as using multiple verification methods or requesting more identity evidence. Similarly, suspicious signals uncovered during UBO verification can prompt further checks on the business.
It’s also not enough to just verify the business and its UBOs. You should also look for inconsistencies between these steps that may point toward fraud or other risk. For example, if the names, addresses, or ownership information provided during UBO verification conflict with information found in business records or documents, that inconsistency may be a red flag that warrants further investigation.
Even if the business meets your basic KYB requirements, consider verifying additional information that can help you gauge its trustworthiness, such as its online presence, physical address, or operating history. Additional checks, like link analysis, can also uncover suspicious connections to known bad actors or other accounts on your platform.
How do businesses usually conduct a Know Your Business process?
Many businesses conduct KYB through a combination of manual reviews, disconnected tools, and separate data sources. That’s because many KYB tools focus on cleaning up and aggregating messy data sources, not necessarily streamlining the process. While automation, data aggregators, and all-in-one solutions have made KYC more efficient, KYB hasn’t seen the same shift.
This means that for businesses using legacy solutions or home-grown tools, the KYB process often looks like this:
Data collection: The business collects company information (such as the business name, address, and EIN or business registration number) from the individual representing the business. For this step, we’ve seen everything from custom-built forms to Google Forms or long PDFs that the two parties send back and forth via email.
Business verification: The organization runs business verifications against the information collected in step one. Some use Google to manually search for authoritative sources that can verify the information. Others manually input these pieces of information into different platforms that search against publicly available sources.
UBO verification: After identifying the beneficial owners — either by Googling or asking the company to declare its owners — the business runs KYC checks on each of them, whether that’s through another vendor or via an in-house process.
Final risk assessment: The business cross-references all the information and makes a final decision about whether to work with the other company.
Communication: The business relays its decision to the company, usually via email or phone.
The good news is that things are beginning to shift. Modern KYB platforms like Persona make it possible to streamline and automate many of these steps, reducing friction and decision time for both parties involved.
What are some common challenges of the KYB process?
Businesses often encounter the following challenges when conducting KYB:
Manual collection: Having to manually collect information and documents from businesses and UBOs, often via email or custom forms.
Manual verification: Having to manually cross-check collected information against multiple sources like company websites, public databases, and other third-party sources.
Drawn-out communication: Multiple back-and-forths with the other business, often via email or phone, to collect missing information and documents, request corrections, and keep them updated on the decision-making process.
Disjointed tools: Multiple KYB vendors handling different parts of the process (for example, one to collect information, one to verify business information, and one to KYC the beneficial owners), often with no way to connect the systems.
All of this means more work for your team, a higher risk of bias and error due to manual reviews, and data inconsistencies — particularly if you’re using multiple KYB vendors. Worse, long wait times and added friction create a poor onboarding experience for legitimate businesses, potentially driving prospective customers elsewhere.
Is KYB legally required?
Many jurisdictions require organizations in industries considered at high risk for money laundering or fraud to conduct KYB. Some common industries where KYB is required include:
Banking and credit institutions, like banks, credit unions, commercial lenders, and investment firms (per the US Bank Secrecy Act)
Fintech and payment platforms, like online banking and investment apps, payment service providers, and payment gateways (per the Bank Secrecy Act and the EU Anti-Money Laundering Regulation)
Cryptocurrency platforms, like exchanges and custodians (per the Bank Secrecy Act, Anti-Money Laundering Regulation, and the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation)
Some ecommerce platforms, like B2C and B2B online marketplaces (per the US INFORM Act and the EU’s Digital Services Act and DAC7)
How does KYB differ by use case?
Each KYB use case calls for a different combination of risk signals, reports, and verification methods. The right approach depends on applicable regulations, the industry, and the size and type of business being verified. Here are a few examples of the nuances that exist between use cases.
Marketplaces onboarding sellers
Online marketplaces may conduct KYB because they’re subject to seller verification requirements like those imposed by the INFORM Act or because they’re trying to reduce instances of marketplace fraud to improve trust and safety on their platform. Key KYB considerations for online marketplaces include:
A large number of small businesses: Online marketplaces often attract small businesses, such as sole proprietorships, which may not appear in the same registries as larger businesses. To verify them, you may need to rely more on online credibility signals like website and email age, website content, and online presence.
Importance of industry classification: To help prevent sellers from listing prohibited items, such as tobacco, alcohol, firearms, and drug paraphernalia, you may need to verify their industry classifications using NAICS and MCC codes.
High volumes at all hours: If you operate a global marketplace, you may receive a high volume of account applications at all hours, making it important to select a vendor that can support these volumes.
Fintechs offering business accounts
For fintechs, online lenders, and crypto platforms, KYB is a core part of meeting anti-money laundering (AML) obligations. Key considerations for these platforms include:
Fraud risk extends beyond large-scale schemes: Small-scale instances of fraud (e.g. when an individual claims they run a business to qualify for a higher credit limit) can be just as costly and damaging as large-scale money laundering operations, but require you to consider different risk signals.
Ownership structures can be complicated: Businesses may have multiple beneficial owners, parent companies, subsidiaries, or other complex structures, making UBO verification particularly complex.
Financial data can help you gauge trustworthiness: Information about a business’s financial history, such as bankruptcy filings or liens, can help you evaluate risks like whether a business is creditworthy.
Procurement teams vetting vendors
When procurement teams perform KYB, it’s usually to determine whether a company can be trusted as a vendor. In some instances, like the public sector, KYB may be required legally. Some important considerations for KYB during procurement include:
AI makes vendor fraud easier: With AI, fraudsters can quickly and easily spin up fake or cloned websites to impersonate real businesses or misrepresent themselves, making online credibility signals, like website age, more important than ever.
Vendors may need to meet specific eligibility criteria: Depending on the contract or project, you may need to verify business licenses, certifications, insurance coverage, business classifications, and other credentials before approving a vendor, so you’ll need a KYB platform that can support these additional checks.
Account takeover remains a risk: If a bad actor compromises a vendor’s account, they may submit a fraudulent invoice or try to engage in another form of fraud. That’s why every vendor invoice and communication needs to be treated with a healthy degree of skepticism even after you’ve completed your initial vetting and onboarding. Consider periodic reverification to minimize these risks.
What should you consider when building a Know Your Business process?
When implementing a Know Your Business process or rethinking processes you currently have in place, you should consider:
Compliance: Are you meeting the regulatory requirements of the countries you’re operating in? Regulations constantly evolve, and you need to be able to easily and flexibly adapt your KYB process as the rules change. You’ll also want an audit trail of the documents you’re receiving and the decisions you’re making.
Fraud prevention: What types of fraud, like business impersonation or fraudulent misrepresentation, do you routinely see? Are you stopping these attempts during onboarding, or only after the fact? You should tailor your KYB process to the fraud you’re most exposed to without shutting the door on other vectors.
Conversion: How easy is your KYB process for users to complete? You want to make sure the time between the business submitting their information and them being approved is as short as possible. If a user needs to ask what’s going on multiple times, your KYB process may be scaring away users and hurting your conversion rate.
Coverage: If you’re using a KYB vendor, do they cover all the countries you operate in? Do they integrate with all of the data sources (e.g. UBO registries and Secretary of State filings) you require to make an informed decision? If you’re filling gaps with additional providers, you may want to consider consolidating under a single new platform.
Consistency: Are your KYB processes orderly and efficient? If your team needs to manually review specific cases, it should be clear what steps they need to take. Without clear guidance, reviewers may reach inconsistent decisions, making the process more difficult to explain during an audit.
Because your KYB process touches everything from your compliance and fraud needs to your conversion and personnel requirements, it’s important to consider each aspect before making changes or implementing a new plan. The goal is to manage risk and meet your obligations without introducing unnecessary friction for legitimate businesses.
How do you build your ideal Know Your Business process?
To build your KYB process, work through the following steps:
Determine your business goals and priorities. What do you want out of KYB? Is your biggest priority complying with regulations, deterring fraud, or building trust and safety with your customers? What trade-offs are you willing to make between conversion and risk management?
Identify your needs. What are your compliance needs (if any)? What do key stakeholders (like banking partners) require? If you’re planning on expanding into new jurisdictions or verticals, what new regulations might you need to meet in the future?
Evaluate your current KYB stack. Which providers and processes are already in place, how well do they work together, and where are the gaps? Also consider how to apply your existing KYC standards to UBO verification.
Design your process. Once you know your goals, current state, needs, and wants, you can begin designing a solution you feel good about using whatever mix of methods and technologies makes the most sense for you.
Analyze and adjust as necessary. Is your new process working as you hoped it would? How are your conversion, fraud, and compliance metrics looking? It’s important to continually track relevant KPIs so you can iterate and improve on what you’ve built.
These steps provide a high-level framework, but designing your KYB process requires careful planning and coordination across teams. The following best practices can help you streamline the process and reduce unnecessary friction:
1. Pursue a risk-based approach
Start by assessing the risks your organization faces and the factors that shape each customer’s risk profile. This risk-based approach forms the bedrock of many AML and KYC strategies.
Taking a risk-based approach helps you:
Tailor your specific checks, screenings, and verifications to the compliance requirements you must meet and the types of fraud your organization faces
Leverage step-up verifications only for customers you deem high risk, while allowing lower-risk customers to complete the process with fewer checks
2. Establish clear policies and processes
Clear, standardized KYB processes help your team avoid confusion, reduce verification and approval delays, and prevent legitimate customers from being rejected without cause. In addition to documenting your process, you should also:
Designate individuals who can act as a point person for questions that come up
Specify when reviewers can make exceptions to information or evidence requirements
Create standardized procedures so team members handle similar cases consistently, regardless of who conducts the review
Ensure a clear auditing process, which is particularly important if you operate in an industry where KYB is required
3. Automate as many tasks as possible
Manual KYB tasks can add anywhere from a few minutes to several days to the approval process. That delay can significantly impact the user experience, potentially harming conversions and driving potential customers into the arms of competitors. It also opens the door to human error, which can be costly to address after the fact.
Fortunately, organizations can now automate most or all steps in a typical KYB process, reducing approval times to seconds in some cases. Some components of your KYB process you may consider automating include:
Initial intake and data collection
Database verifications and lookups
PEP, adverse media, and sanctions or watchlist screenings
Email and phone risk reports
Address lookups
UBO verification
Risk analysis and final decisioning
4. Reduce back-and-forth during collection
One of the most time-consuming pieces of the KYB process is the business document collection phase. This is when you gather ownership, tax, and other corporate documents to confirm that the business is legitimate.
Document collection often slows down when users submit the wrong documents or upload files that are expired or illegible. The resulting back-and-forth with customers can add days or weeks to the process.
You can reduce these delays by automatically verifying documents as customers upload them. If the system detects an issue, you can immediately prompt the customer to submit a different document or correct the problem.
What should a KYB checklist include?
If your organization routinely onboards business customers, you may want to compile a KYB checklist to guide the onboarding process.
This checklist should specify the information you need to collect to assess a business’s risk of fraud or money laundering. The exact information varies by industry and organization but typically includes:
General risk signals
Beneficial owners risk signals
Financial history risk signals
Online presence risk signals
Other risk signals
Not sure what you should include in your checklist? Download our free KYB checklist and guide here.
What Know Your Business metrics should you care about when building your process?
Before implementing a new KYB process or making changes to existing processes, you should benchmark key metrics you’ll use to evaluate its success over time. The specific metrics you should track depend on the reason behind your KYB process (compliance, fraud, trust and safety, etc.) as well as what matters most to your business.
Consider tracking KPIs related to accuracy, fraud rates, user experience, operational efficiency, and automation efficiency:
| Category | Sample KPIs |
|---|---|
| Accuracy | False positive rate, false negative rate, agreement rate between automated decisions and manual review |
| Fraud rates | Fraud detection rate, percentage of approved businesses later identified as fraudulent, percentage of applications flagged for suspected fraud |
| User experience | Time to completion, verification completion rate, abandonment rate, number of requests for additional information |
| Operational efficiency | Average manual review time, number of cases handled per analyst, average number of interactions required to resolve a case, cost per verification |
| Automation efficiency | Percentage of verifications automatically decided, percentage requiring manual review, automated decision time, percentage of automated decisions later overridden |
How to document and audit your KYB process flow
Once you’ve established your KYB process, it’s important to document it. This will give you an opportunity to explain the logic you used in designing your program and give members on your team a resource they can turn to if and when they inevitably have questions.
Some aspects of your process you should consider documenting include:
The risks that your KYB process is trying to account for, whether they’re related to compliance, fraud, or another concern
Which types of accounts or businesses that interact with your organization are (and aren’t) subject to KYB
The data you must collect to evaluate the risks posed by each business and UBO, as well as a detailed outline around how that data is used
The data sources you prefer to use to validate information about a business, and the reasons why your organization prefers certain data sources over other options
The evidence (registration numbers, TINs, business documents) you need to collect to facilitate these verifications
The tools, technologies, and verification methods you leverage to perform KYB, including an outline of when to use each technology or method
A protocol to follow for edge cases or other instances where manual review may be necessary
A breakdown of who is responsible for each component and step of your KYB process
The logic that underpins your risk-rating and decision-making methods
Any events that may trigger a reassessment of a business’s risk profile
Likewise, it’s important to periodically audit your KYB processes to ensure they’re still effective and to understand if any adjustments can be made. At least once a year, revisit your processes and critique them through the lens of:
The types of fraud your organization is encountering
The volumes you’re seeing
The fraud rates you’re experiencing
The tools available to both you and fraudsters
What should you look for in KYB vendors?
The ideal KYB platform for you is the one that empowers you to meet your compliance, fraud, and trust and safety goals as efficiently as possible. As you’re evaluating potential vendors, look for the following features:
A comprehensive platform
Look for a single platform capable of supporting every step of the process so you don’t have to stitch together multiple KYB vendors. With this in mind, look for a platform that can support as many verification checks and methods as possible.
A single platform offers a unified view of all relevant customer information, documentation, and risk signals, which can be particularly helpful during investigations or follow-up. It also simplifies procurement and integration by reducing the number of vendors and platforms you need to manage.
If you really want to use multiple data sources and/or vendors, be sure you can easily integrate with all of them.
Flexibility and customizability
KYB isn’t a cookie-cutter process. What works for other businesses may not work for you.
An ideal vendor will give you the power to build KYB flows informed by your industry norms, regulatory requirements, user expectations, conversion needs, and more. And because regulations are constantly shifting, it should be relatively easy to make changes as they become necessary.
Streamlined user experience
An unwieldy KYB program introduces friction into your onboarding process which, left unchecked, can affect conversions.
A best-in-class platform will come with built-in capabilities you can use to improve the user experience, including the ability to:
pre-fill fields with data extracted from uploaded documents
localize the flow for each country or region by tailoring the language, instructions, and document types you ask users to upload
adjust verification requirements based on risk by adding additional checks for high-risk businesses and simplifying the process for lower-risk businesses
Data coverage
You should also evaluate potential KYB vendors on their data coverage to ensure that they integrate with the data sources you need. If you operate in multiple countries, you’ll need to get a sense of their coverage for every country where you conduct KYB.
Beyond basic coverage levels, other capabilities to watch out for include:
Direct integration with data sources such as UBO registries and Secretary of State databases
The ability to gather holistic business signals like the organization’s online presence
Document retrieval capabilities so you can pull documents directly from relevant sources instead of requiring the user to upload them
Decisioning
You should also evaluate how the platform supports decision-making.
Review automation can take two forms: rules-based workflows that adjust the KYB process as risk signals emerge, or AI agents that conduct the review. If regulators audit your KYB program, make sure you can explain and reproduce each result. Rules-based workflows may be better suited to compliance, while agentic review may be a better fit for trust and safety use cases.
For manual processes like reviews and KYB investigations, look for a tool that gives your team all the information they need in a single dashboard without requiring them to switch between multiple screens and tabs.
10 questions to ask KYB vendors
1. What onboarding flows are available out of the box, and how easily can we change them? Ask to see how the vendor would adapt a flow for a different business type, market, or customer experience without engineering support.
2. Can I conduct business verification and UBO verification in one connected flow? Find out how the vendor identifies beneficial owners, runs KYC checks when needed, and keeps the results together.
3. How much information can you pre-fill? Ask which business details the platform can pre-fill using existing data, what applicants still have to enter, and what happens when pre-filled information is wrong.
4. How does the experience change by country and language? Ask for a demonstration of localized fields, documents, instructions, and verification paths in the markets you serve, as well as any markets you intend to expand into.
5. Can the flow request additional information only when risk signals indicate it’s necessary? Have the vendor show a low-risk applicant’s path and a higher-risk applicant’s path, including what triggers extra checks or document requests. Ask whether you can set the thresholds that determine when a business undergoes simplified, standard, or enhanced KYB.
6. Which registries and other data sources do you connect to? Ask for coverage in your specific countries and states or provinces, how current the data is, how often it’s refreshed, and what happens when a source has no match or is unavailable.
7. What signals can you bring together to assess the business? Look beyond a registry match. Ask about ownership, sanctions, adverse media, online presence, and other signals relevant to your risk policy. Determine whether reviewers can see the evidence behind each result.
8. Can you retrieve business documents, and what must the applicant provide? Ask which, if any, filings the vendor can obtain, where retrieval is available, and how the flow handles documents it cannot retrieve.
9. How are submitted documents collected and analyzed? Ask how the vendor checks whether a document is genuine, if it can automatically extract the document’s contents to compare against registry and applicant data, and how discrepancies are handled.
10. How do decisions and exceptions get resolved? Ask the vendor to walk through an approval, a request for more information, and a manual review. Who can change the decision rules and workflows? What does a reviewer see? What can AI-assisted review do? How are its recommendations and final decisions recorded?
What sets Persona KYB apart?
Persona’s KYB solution brings business verification, UBO verification, and ongoing monitoring together in one platform. That’s why businesses like Square, Twilio, and GetYourGuide all trust Persona for their KYB needs. Some of Persona’s strengths include:
A fully customizable collection and verification engine
Use Dynamic Flow to collect information about both the business and its UBOs.
Everything is fully customizable and configurable, including what information you want to collect — whether that’s the business’s name, address, EIN, estimated revenue and headcount, or something else entirely. And because we know it’s important to build trust up front, you can customize the flow to match your brand, including the font, text, logo, color scheme, size of text, placement of buttons, and more.
Once you’ve collected the necessary information, choose how you want to verify the business and UBOs. For businesses, this includes (but is not limited to):
Document verification: Allows users to either take a photo of or upload business documents, such as their business registration certificate. Once they submit, we’ll run verifications in real time, including checks for document relevance and signs of tampering.
TIN verification: Takes the business name and tax ID number and checks for a valid match against IRS records.
VAT validation: Confirms that a business has a valid VAT number and that the number is associated with a particular name and address
Business lookup report: Takes the business name and address and verifies that the business exists in the US by cross-referencing relevant databases like Secretary of State registries.
Business watchlist report: Screens the business across 100+ global sanctions, warning, and fitness & probity lists.
Business adverse media report: Screens the business to identify any negative or unfavorable information associated with it.
Online credibility reports: Screens the business against a suite of supplemental reports, including website legitimacy, online presence, industry classification, and more.
For individual UBOs, this includes:
Document verifications: Collect any document, such as a government ID or utility bill, and extract the details from the document. We run tampering and fraud checks behind the scenes to detect signs of digital alteration or forgery.
Database verifications: Verify user-submitted information against authoritative databases to confirm it matches official records.
On-demand reports: Screen the individual against reports such as watchlists, PEP, and adverse media.
Our automated risk verification engine lets you adapt the user experience to each applicant’s risk level and address identity verification challenges throughout the KYB process. For example, if businesses with more than one address tend to commit more fraud on your platform, you can automatically route those cases to your team for manual review. Meanwhile, businesses with a single address can continue through the automated approval flow.
And if a new regulation comes out or you encounter a new type of fraud and need to change your verification flow, no problem. It’s easy to change everything from the type of information you want to collect to the verifications you want to run or how many times the user can attempt verification.
Automation
After you identify each UBO, Persona automatically emails them to complete KYC and provide their personally identifiable information (PII) and ID. This reduces manual work for your team, lets each UBO submit their information directly, and allows KYB and KYC to run in parallel, saving time and reducing onboarding friction.
Automation also helps reduce back-and-forth between you and the business you’re verifying. By scanning documents in real time, Persona’s platform can help streamline the document collection process. If the system detects an error, it can prompt the user to submit the correct document before they finish verification, reducing the need for time-consuming follow-up emails.
We also offer several automation options that reduce verification friction and improve the user experience. For example, once you know who a person is, Persona can use official data sources to pre-fill form fields, reducing the amount of information they need to enter manually.
All the information you need in one place
Our case management tool centralizes everything you’ve collected (active, passive, and behavioral signals, plus supporting documentation) into a single, unified view. That makes it easy to run one-off manual reviews or deeper compliance and fraud investigations from one place. If you also use Graph, Persona’s link analysis tool, you can bring its results right into the case: reviewers can see accounts on your platform connected by shared signals like IP addresses, payment details, and ID numbers, then jump into Graph for a deeper look.
And because Cases was built with compliance in mind, it’s simple to maintain audit-ready records with detailed activity logging, checklists, and case comments your team can leave right on the case.
Onboard businesses faster with Persona
With Persona, you get a streamlined solution that empowers you to stitch together business verifications and KYC in one place. Plus, you can tie it in with the rest of your business onboarding process thanks to integrations with vendors like Salesforce and HubSpot.
Plus, it’s easy to get started quickly. Having one system manage the entire process from end to end means fewer vendor evaluations, and we’ve seen customers implement Persona’s KYB solution in as little as a day or two. Choose from integration options that range from adding a link to your platform to embedding the experience into your webpage or mobile app.
Ready to automate your KYB process and onboard more businesses? Reach out to your CSM or contact us for a custom demo today.
The information provided is not intended to constitute legal advice; all information provided is for general informational purposes only and may not constitute the most up-to-date information. Any links to other third-party websites are only for the convenience of the reader.
FAQs
What is the difference between a KYC and a KYB process?
Toggle description visibility
KYB and KYC are distinct, but related, processes. The key difference is scope: KYC verifies an individual’s identity and assesses their risk, while KYB verifies a business’s legitimacy and the identities of its beneficial owners or key personnel.
| KYC process | KYB process | |
| Purpose | Verifying that a person is who they say they are | Verifying that a business exists and that both the business and its owners are safe to work with |
| Verification methods | Government ID verification, database verification, selfie verification, background checks, various screenings (sanctions list, watchlist, adverse media, PEP) | Business document verification, database verification, UBO verification, various screenings (sanctions list, watchlist, adverse media, PEP) |
| Automation level | Can be fully or partially automated | Can be fully or partially automated |
| Interdependence | KYC can form one part of a broader KYB process in the form of UBO verification | KYB is not typically a part of the KYC process for individuals |
Note: business customers differ in their ownership structures, industries, UBOs, and other factors that shape their risk profiles. Your KYB process should be flexible enough to account for these differences.
What information do businesses verify in a KYB process?
Toggle description visibility
A KYB process typically verifies a business’s identifying and registration information, supporting documents, and ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs). This information helps confirm that the business is legitimate and assess the risk associated with the business and its owners. Organizations may collect additional information, evidence, and risk signals based on their risk policies and required level of assurance. At a minimum, this typically includes the business’s:
Name
Business address
Contact information
Tax identification number (TIN)
Business registration numbers
Business documents
Name, TIN, contact information, and government-issued ID of each of the business’s UBOs
How long does the Know Your Business process take?
Toggle description visibility
How long KYB takes depends on factors like:
Whether you leverage automation for verifications and checks or have manual processes
Whether customers provide physical business documents or scans for verification
The size and capabilities of your team
Whether any follow-up is required — for example, to correct errors, replace documents, etc.
With this in mind, KYB can take anywhere from a few minutes for automated processes to multiple weeks for more manual processes.
Who is responsible for the KYB process within an organization?
Toggle description visibility
In most organizations, the KYB process is owned by the company’s risk or compliance team. That said, your KYB compliance program should involve any team associated with onboarding new customers, which may include your product, sales, marketing, IT, security, and user experience teams.
Which industries require a KYB process?
Toggle description visibility
The industries required to conduct KYB vary by jurisdiction and depend on applicable laws and regulations.
In most countries, companies operating in the financial space, including both traditional financial institutions and fintechs, are required to perform KYB as part of a broader Anti-Money Laundering (AML) program.
Likewise, online marketplaces are often required to perform KYB to comply with laws like the INFORM Consumers Act in the US and the DAC7 and DSA in the EU. Similar laws in other jurisdictions have made this the norm for the industry.
Regardless of whether KYB is required, it’s often an effective means of protecting businesses from fraud. With this in mind, many companies in other industries routinely perform KYB even when it’s not legally required, including the public sector, digital health, logistics, and artificial intelligence industries.
How often should you update your Know Your Business process?
Toggle description visibility
Your KYB process isn’t something that you should establish once and never worry about again. You should periodically revisit your strategy to evaluate whether it’s effective and to identify any improvements you can make.
At least once a year, return to your KYB processes and perform this evaluation. Also consider updating your KYB strategy when:
You experience a significant uptick in fraud attempts
Documented fraudsters are successfully skirting your defenses
New technologies or methods are available
New KYB regulations pass (or are expected to pass) into law
You’re expanding into a new jurisdiction, industry, market, or customer base
You’re considering a new KYB vendor or solution
Why automate the KYB process?
Toggle description visibility
Performing KYB on your customers involves a lot of steps, each of which takes time to perform. Manual KYB may work for organizations with low onboarding volumes, but it becomes difficult to scale as volume grows. Automating the KYB process can make it easier for you to handle larger volumes, leading to faster approvals and potentially fewer human errors.
Keep learning: Onboard businesses faster with Persona's automated Know Your Business (KYB) solution
Does Persona support KYB?
Toggle description visibility
Yes. Businesses can use Persona’s KYB solution to perform both business verification and UBO verification. Capabilities include:
Business document verification
Database verification
Sanctions and watchlist screenings
PEP screenings
Email and phone risk reports
Adverse media reports
Address and social media lookup
Government ID verification
Selfie verification
Link analysis
