SWIFT announced that it will be opening its Know Your Customer platform, the KYC Registry, to corporates.

In a first step, from Q4 2019, all 2,000 SWIFT-connected corporate groups will be able to join The KYC Registry, and use it to upload, maintain and share their KYC information with their banks.

Enabling corporates to join The KYC Registry will be transformational both for multi-banked corporates and for their banks, who already benefit from access to the 5,100 bank strong registry and can see the huge advantage of adding corporates.

Major corporations use a range of banks in different jurisdictions around the world, with whom they need to exchange information to enable KYC checks. Data is held in different places and is often incomplete or out of date, making the process time consuming for both corporates and their banks.

The absence of uniformity, differing jurisdictional requirements and the lack of standardised data across the corporate KYC space increases these inefficiencies further. The KYC Registry is an online portal for financial institutions to exchange institutional KYC Due Diligence information.

The platform allows banks to share KYC data and documents with their correspondents in a secure, standardised and controlled way, as well to get access to their correspondents’ complete and validated KYC profiles, resulting in efficiency and cost savings in KYC processes.

The introduction of corporates will enable corporates to upload standard information to The KYC Registry as well as to exchange other KYC-relevant documents that are requested by their banks, thereby ensuring the highest level of usability of the platform. Banks will benefit by having access to corporates’ information through the same central repository they use for their correspondent KYC checks, thereby enabling efficient data sharing through a secure central utility, eliminating duplication and inefficiency.

Featured image credit: SWIFT, Taken at SOFA in midtown Manhattan