Encompass Adds Bisnode for KYC

Encompass Corporation, a provider of know-your-customer (KYC) technologies, has integrated Bisnode’s data and analytics offering to automate customer onboarding services and enhance data quality for the Nordic markets.

Encompass will have access to Bisnode’s data resources, covering some of the largest institutions in northern Europe through its partnership with Dun & Bradsheet. Using robotic processing technology and machine learning, it is designed to analyze, extract and monitor the necessary information of ultimate beneficial owners from vast amounts of public and premium datasets.

Joachim Karlsson, chief strategy officer at Bisnode explains that the offering will combine Encompass’ workflow and Bisnode’s far-reaching database.

“From a user or bank perspective they are going to view everything as a unified platform,” he adds. “From a technical point of view, Encompass is going to access all of the data we have and all of the data the banks needs through our standardized application programming interface (API).”

Under European legislation, banks and financial institutions are mandated to conduct necessary KYC and anti-money laundering checks and audits when onboarding clients. Nick Ford, head of partnerships at Encompass says that the integration will enable institutional firms to more effectively and efficiently perform their required due diligence when screening individual shareholders and keeping the information up to date.

“What Encompass does is pull in multiple datasets and simplify the information by being able to visualize it,” he adds. “So we have the visualization technology which takes those shareholders, pulls up the ultimate beneficial ownership and then it provides all the necessary screening and adverse media information.”

The Encompass offering is deployed on a software-as-a-service. Its infrastructure is data agnostic and uses built-in matching features to ingest data from multiple resources including public registries, regulators and exchanges, through API integrations, web extraction or paid sources. Ford explains that the service involves light integration and the option of onsite training for clients. It can be delivered using a single API plugged into an institution’s customer lifecycle management system or through or a private cloud, with access through a web browser and client portal.

Ford says that the latest announcement with Bisnode has emerged due to the shift in the Nordic region for banks to outsource a shared utility for KYC, AML and data services. Interest in having a centralized utility has also sprouted interest across other jurisdictions recently, including Africa and Singapore.

“The important thing is to have the best in class workflow and best available data,” says Karlsson. You cannot just have one, you need both and you need them packaged together in one system. This is a pain [demand] we are going to see in all of the banks and financial institutions today and it is going to increase over time.”