Refinitiv Adds Additional Alt Datasets into Risk Intelligence Solution

Despite pulling out of its KYC as a Service solution in June, Refinitiv is staying committed to its know-your-customer products, and has introduced two new add-on features into its existing screening platform, World-Check One. The enhancements, called UBO Check and Vessel Check, integrate ultimate beneficial ownership (UBO) data from Dun & Bradstreet, and vessel data from IHS Markit Maritime and Trade, which cover more than 200 countries and 19,000 ships in international waters combined.

The features aim not only to reduce time and scale of the onboarding process and ongoing KYC procedures for banks, but also to aid in trade finance investigations, a field which largely operates on paper trails and low-grade technology. When Refinitiv conducted a survey of about 1,000 of its risk and intelligence clients, respondents answered that they most needed a seamless workflow that could uncover and tie together loads of data across jurisdictions, and help lighten increasing regulatory pressure on financial institutions to better understand UBO structure and mitigate risk.

“You can have many different UBO structures,” says Verity Snelson, risk intelligence manager at Refinitiv. “You can have a very clear line with one owner of an entity, [decide] they are the UBO, [and] it’s very clear. But also, you can have UBOs that sit in offshore jurisdictions where it can be particularly difficult to uncover who’s the ultimate beneficial owner. It can be five, six, seven layers between the actual UBO and between the entity itself.”

By combining existing risk intelligence capabilities inside World-Check One, the feature will enable clients to identify risks that aren’t always obvious at first glance through screening and generating a visual of ownership structure.

Today, Snelson says, the way banks have cracked open UBO data has been to require clients to report that information themselves. The burden then rests on the institution to sort through those layers and verify the information before further investigations – those for KYC, anti-money-laundering and sanctions screening – can continue. But the new data hub offers a continuous reference point for institutions, which can be refreshed and re-analyzed as ownership structure shifts.

“Trade finance is a big business for banks. It makes a lot of money,” Snelson says. “So they go through a lot of work to uncover the risk that’s behind any trade.”

IHS Markit Maritime and Trade, the largest maritime database in the world, logs up to seven levels of ownership for vessels with 11 years of individual vessel history. By tapping into Vessel Check, banks can answer certain questions before engaging in trade finance deals, such as: what the contents of a shipment are, who the vessel’s UBO is, which country it departs from and which ports it passes through. From there, the bank’s risk and compliance team can identify connections to sanctioned countries and individuals and other high-risk entities hidden in the sidelines.

Refinitiv continues to invest in its KYC and digital identity products, adding they’re committed to deploying emerging technologies such as AI and machine learning within them, along with helping clients understand how to implement similar projects in their own organizations.