Fast and efficient OCDD – is compliance holding up your business?

In this blog post, we delve into the importance of implementing a streamlined and effective OCDD for business compliance in Australia, highlighting the significant role it plays in ensuring regulatory compliance and mitigating risks.

Australian financial institutions (FIs) spend billions of dollars on compliance each year, and the ongoing rise in the volume and complexity of financial crime is making it more challenging to meet regulatory requirements while delivering simple, seamless customer experiences.

Every industry is facing these challenges in different ways. For example, the wagering and betting industries have historically used basic identity verification rules to check an identity, such as verifying a name and date of birth against one other data source. However, these rules may no longer meet the required standards.

In the banking sector, it is still common for Ongoing Customer Due Diligence (OCDD) and Enhanced Customer Due Diligence (ECDD) to not be fully embedded into customer management processes or be managed with legacy technology. This means that when re-verification is required, it can be costly and time-consuming.

Furthermore, the cryptocurrency industry is still broadly perceived as unregulated and is a consistent target for scammers and fraudsters. While Australians are fast adopters of crypto and the market is continuing to evolve, new regulations and requirements in this sector are potentially on the horizon and could create financial and operational headaches for organisations that are not ready but will suddenly need to play catch up to continue doing business.

How we helped an Australian bank meet sudden remediation requirements within two months

We recently enabled a major Australian bank to save time, money, and operational resources while meeting a tight deadline set by the regulator, AUSTRAC. The bank had been requested to undertake a remediation program, which would involve reverifying hundreds of high-risk individuals as part of their KYC (Know Your Customer) obligation. The current management of this process was completely manual, which would have made the exercise both costly and resource-intensive.

The bank selected our identity solution, which met their needs and provided a value-added service to their compliance obligations. With our identity solution, the organisation could automate the remediation program, reducing manual processing and the solution was implemented with minimal IT impacts or cost.

As well as delivering an effective solution, our team were able to support the bank quickly by having deep knowledge of the regulations and the industry and investing in building strong relationships across the business through daily stand-ups and more. The bank was able to meet the regulator’s requirements by their deadline and in a cost-effective way by taking a forward-thinking approach to OCDD and compliance management, partnering with our industry experts, and adopting our sophisticated technology solutions.

Easing the pain of OCDD/ECDD processes

OCDD/ECDD is a critical part of AML/CTF obligations, but as evidenced by the above example, with legacy technology or manual processes as the default, this can be time-consuming and expensive to manage. Yet, the cost and resources involved in addressing the fallout of non-compliance can have significant impacts on the business’s finances, operations, reputation, customer loyalty, and more.

Our industry-leading solution can reduce the number of manual verifications needed in OCDD processes due to the following:

• Our unique data sets help achieve high match rates, reducing customer impact
• Enabling customers to connect quickly with our hosted capability to capture additional identity information, removing internal technical costs and resource limitations
• Easy verification against the Australian Death Check to remove deceased individuals
• Data cleansing for improved insights and matching accuracy
• The multiple-stage process to verify data against non-consent data sources
• Self-verification on non-verified or high-risk individuals via SMS, email or Online Banking.

If your business is looking for remediation or re-verification solutions, or if you would like to discuss your AML/CTF or ECDD/OCDD requirements in more detail to find a tailored solution for your needs, contact us.