Standard Chartered Hong Kong is currently working with three tech vendors to streamline its ‘know your client’ (KYC) procedures, and is also launching an online account-opening system later this year.
“During the outsourcing process, we could not find a tech company with the required expertise in every stage of the KYC process, so we settled on a three-company solution,” said Carol Hung, chief information officer, Standard Chartered Hong Kong.
The three third-party vendors will each focus on different elements of the KYC process, specifically the collection of clients’ documents, the analysis of clients’ company structures, and the backend due diligence process.
According to Hung, the bank will also be implementing an online account-opening service later this year, but still needs to decide which client segments will be eligible to use the facility.
Third-party vendors increase cost efficiency
At the SuperCharger Fintech Accelerator demo day, of which Standard Chartered has been a partner for the third consecutive year, Hung said that the bank has benefitted from collaborating with fintech companies.
“It is very cost effective for us to collaborate with fintech companies,” said Hung, adding that, in the bank’s experience, working with third-party vendors increases the flexibility and shortens the time of designing efficient solutions.
Hung said the 2018 SuperCharger programme, which aims to “find, train and scale the next generation of entrepreneurs” has been the “most effective” for the bank so far, owing to it being the first year that Standard Chartered sourced fintech solutions through a problem statement via the programme.
In addition to the discussions that Standard Chartered is having with firms offering KYC solutions, it has carried out a pilot project — often referred to as ‘proof of concept’ (POC) — with Indian AI startup vPhrase to speed up the vetting process of granting loans to small and medium enterprises. vPhrase was among the programme’s ten fintech finalists this year.
In 2017, Standard Chartered discovered wealth tech provider Bambu through last year’s SuperCharger FinTech Accelerator programme. Bambu was the first fintech company to sign a POC partnership with the bank.
