Since its inception in 1987, IMTF group’s mission has been to automate processes in banking by bringing technology and regulations together and to successfully address compliance challenges.
IMTF group, headquartered in Switzerland, is an international software and application integration company with 30 years of experience in the financial service industry. IMTF develops, markets, and implements professional software applications for the automation of key business processes in the areas of KYC, onboarding and client lifecycle management, secure enterprise content management, AML and tax compliance, as well as fraud detection and prevention.
IMTF’s applications support more than 200 customers around the world in their digital transformation, in monitoring and managing compliance, making better decisions and being more efficient and responsive. IMTF’s solutions will enthuse your customers, protect your information and prevent losses and reputational damage. IMTF’s expertise gained over more than 30 years combined with a clear focus enables you to achieve sustained added value and to quickly adapt to new trends and regulations.
Our experience in the KYC and risk assessment areas is that overtime with the increasing complexity of compliance regulations and the new digital channels, onboarding / lifecycle processes have become more pricey, laborious and prone to error. A client can be contacted up to ten times during the onboarding process to collect between five and 100 pieces of data and documentation; it can take up to 34 weeks to onboard a new client and cost up to $25,000 (with an average of $6,000) per client to do so. [1]
Financial institutions are therefore faced with three challenges: increasing data quality, operational efficiency and customer experience. To meet those challenges financial institutions have to reevaluate how KYC data is collected and generated within their institutions. ‘Good data’ is not only critical for KYC and compliance assurance but for providing state-of-the-art service to the client during his/her entire lifecycle at the bank.
To collect ‘good data’ in a pertinent, consistent and compliant way as well as to review it when deemed necessary, specific technological support is required as manual processes and silo solutions have proven to be no longer efficient. From a strategic point of view, banks have to adopt a customer-centric approach to ensure that specific departments, functions, and systems do not define the process.
Not every technology can support institutions implementing a client-centred approach aiming at acquiring ‘good data’. The recommended technology has to crystallise in a highly responsive, tailored Regtech platform, which can support the full client lifecycle and keep pace with changing requirements, while integrating smoothly with core systems, CRM, etc. currently in use within the financial institution.
To maximize the use of technology and ensure immediate impact, institutions have to invest time in defining their wished-for process. Organizational introspection is required to identify client touchpoints, data entry points, duplicated tasks across functions, repeated information requests, hand-offs, bottlenecks, manual work, etc.
IMTF supports financial institutions in their introspective analysis by sharing their 30-year of experience in this area and with their second generation automated onboarding and client lifecycle management solution: ICOS/2.
ICOS/2 has been developed and deployed by IMTF to support every type of bank (retail, wealth management, corporate and investment-banking) and insurance to efficiently manage the complexity of client identification, client lifecycle, compliance requirements and product suitability. ICOS/2 not only supports the whole process but also comes with last generation technology for real-time global data monitoring, semantic federated search for enhanced KYC and AML due diligence, a full audit trail, automated reporting to compliance authorities, and ad-hoc and event-triggered reviews (for ex: documentation renewal).
Mainly, ICOS/2 helps solve the following challenges:
- Automate KYC and risk assessment for all customers across all channels and at any due time during the relationship
- Provide the best omnichannel experience by ensuring a seamless customer journey from prospecting to onboarding, through servicing
- Maximise digital integration at the branch for relationship managers to offer customers the best combination of the physical and digital worlds; and on-the-go to answer bank customers’ demand driven by smartphones and tablets with self-serve, real-time status, and collaboration apps
ICOS/2 is based on a robust rule engine combined with a dynamic case manager allowing finding the best balance between human judgement and automation. ICOS/2 users are guided through the process, questionnaires are built in contextually and with a risk based approach, triggering additional questions and due diligence tasks.
The embedded business rule coverage is very comprehensive and includes the management of complex relations, cross-border policies, client data disclosure, tax regulations such as FATCA or CRS, product and service suitability.
As a word of conclusion, will you be ready for MiFID II and the next regulatory wave, which comes into force more quickly than anticipated? Our ICOS/2 customers will be.
[1] *New Research Study on Time, Cost and Challenges of Client Onboarding, Fenergo/Forrester Consulting 2015
Image: Christoph Erb, CEO, IMTF digitrans.