EverCompliant, the payments industry leader in online Anti-Money Laundering specializing in business cyber intelligence, announced today the launch of eKYC Discovery, a tool that addresses potential gaps in the Bank Secrecy Act and Anti-Money Laundering-mandated Know Your Customer (KYC) processes that could leave financial institutions exposed to criminal activity.
The KYC gap allows money laundering, terror financing and many other types of illegal activity and fraud to slip into the banking system, unnoticed.
To illustrate the magnitude of the issues associated with insufficient online KYC programs, EverCompliant used its AI-powered technology and was able to identify over one million sites that appear to be engaged in improper and potentially illegal activity, while collecting money through seemingly legitimate “front” websites. These illicit websites remain operational because criminals are able to covertly enter the financial ecosystem and have their financial transactions processed due to the limitations of existing KYC solutions.
Traditional KYC procedures allow financial institutions - such as banks, credit unions, and brokerage firms - to understand the financial dealings of their customers and manage both regulatory and brand risk to their business. Yet, in the age of the Internet, most KYC programs neglect key risk factors by largely ignoring their online presence and by focusing on the physical, offline details of their corporate customers - Business Name and Address, Registration, Credit Score, Nature of Business, Sanction & PEP List and more.
EverCompliant's eKYC Discovery™ solution allows for financial institutions, money service providers, and government officials to gain a deeper insight into a corporate customer’s complete profile by analyzing the Internet for hard-to-find, potentially hidden connections to sanctioned countries, illegal businesses, and risky business associations. The technology was built to leverage existing KYC investments and infrastructure to keep operations running smoothly, and to help financial institutions prevent fines, regulatory action, and brand damage associated with fraud. eKYC Discovery™ is an API-driven, data-query tool designed to work instantly and seamlessly with existing KYC solutions and processes.
“The current KYC solutions on the market don’t offer the capability to evaluate the online presence of an organization, leaving gaps for bad actors to exploit,” said Ron Teicher, Founder and CEO of EverCompliant. “Our technology helps make the world safer by enabling our customers to easily identify high-risk entities through online verification and prevent dangerous criminals from entering our financial system.”
