As a pioneer in developing agile technological solutions for electronic signature and automation of KYC, used by banking and insurance companies, Vialink has heralded a new era in digitalization. The company strongly believes in investing in its R&D and it pays off. The result: Its innovative Artificial Intelligence solutions, developed to support finance companies in automating their KYC processes through an easily integrated API platform.

Said Philippe Sanchis, CEO, Vialink, that he decided to invest in digitalization and automation of the KYC processes within banking and insurance sectors many years ago. The plan was to offer a 360° vision of the customer in real-time, drastically improving both banks’ productivity and customers’ experience, while minimizing the regulator’s sanctions risk. “In the last 15 years, the rise of terrorism and money laundering has forced worldwide regulators to establish new directives and to require better customer knowledge from the financial sector. Thus, the bank, insurance players have put in place appropriate measures to verify their customer’s data (KYC – Know Your Customer), often via a set of manual procedures. These KYC processes has become a major cost center for banks and insurances.” The regulators around the world have also considerably increased the number of penalties incurred in the event of non-compliance with KYC obligations, he observed.

The AI Connect 

The company is aggressively investing in AI to overcome the shortcomings of traditional approaches that involve manual KYC checks of different documents—from customer IDs, pay slips to tax reports, invoices, and more. “Our value proposition is simple, through our automated KYC services we deliver major productivity gains, minimized fraud and sanctions risks and drastically improved customer experience” added Philippe. With technology trends like AI and blockchain taking over the financial space, Philippe does not feel that FinTech’s have really transformed. “At the end of the road, innovation has always been the cornerstone of FinTech’s strategies, AI and Blockchain are just tools used to provide a better service, no magic there, the true value comes from the innovative services that FinTechs deliver to the market” he added.

Challenges Galore 

Noting that the current Fintech landscape provides an exciting market, Philippe noted that a very specific challenge to Fintech companies is to tackle with long and slow sales cycles when they are trying to sell to traditional finance players (banks, insurances). “I also think that a key asset of the traditional finance players is the trust they have built over time with their customers. Building trust with customers is in my opinion crucial for FinTech companies who want to last.” Compliance is another challenge for FinTech’s, User experience is always a priority but what is required to ensure regulatory compliance can be quite underestimated, according to Philippe.

Compliance and Fraud services

Vialink’s innovative solutions offer faster identification processes and simplified procedures that enhance customer experience drastically—from opening a customer account to closing it, through its remediation. Added Philippe that in less than 10 seconds, they automate all customers checks and offers a 360-degree view of them, analyzing all its data and supporting documents, which focuses on not only the identity but also other aspects such as an address, revenue, determining if a customer is politically exposed person or has links with terrorist networks, and much more. “This 360-degree, real-time approach is further strengthened by its ability to perform both KYC and Know Your Business (KYB) processes for screening individuals and companies respectively.”

The Road Ahead

“The pace of tech innovation will be exponential in the next few years. It will put a lot of pressure on tech companies so finally the main challenge FinTech’s might face could be to be able to constantly deliver new products/services with limited time to make a profit with that innovation” Philippe signed off.