The meaning of the phrase KYC is “know your customer”. KYC regulations provide a framework for financial institutions to know who their customers are.
Financial institutions need to protect themselves from unknowingly participating in illegal activities. If a criminal is discovered to be using a bank for illicit purposes, such as laundering money, then the bank in question could be held accountable. It’s their responsibility to be aware at all times of who they are serving, so they can prevent themselves from being used for criminal activity.
KYC involves making sure banks and other companies in the financial service sector maintain accurate information about their customers. KYC requirements create a universal standard that financial organizations must comply with to know who their customers are. KYC laws and anti-money laundering (AML) laws often go hand-in-hand.
What Are the Three Components of KYC?
There are three main parts of a KYC compliance framework: customer identification, customer due diligence, and enhanced due diligence. Each phase of the process gets more intensive according to the estimated risk that the potential client might pose.
Customer Identification Program (CIP)
The first of the three main KYC requirements is to identify a customer. Organizations must verify that a potential customer’s ID is valid, real, and doesn’t contain any inconsistencies. The person must also not be on any Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions lists.
An organization also needs to know if their prospective customer is “politically exposed.” A politically exposed person (PEP), such as a public figure, is thought to be more susceptible to corruption than the average individual, and is therefore considered high-risk, requiring special attention.
As part of their AML/KYC compliance program, all financial institutions are required to keep records of their Customer Identification Program (CIP) as mandated by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
FinCEN works under the guidance of the department of Treasury and is charged with guarding the financial system against illicit activity and money laundering.
The following information will satisfy the minimum KYC requirements for a Customer Identification Program:
• Customer name (or name of business)
• Address
• Date of birth (not required for businesses)
• Identification number
For individuals, the customer’s residential address must be validated. US Postal Office boxes are not accepted. Individuals with no physical residential address can use an Army Post Office box (APO), Fleet Post Office Box (FPO), or the residential or business street address of their next of kin.
For business customers, the address provided for know your customer requirements can be the principal place of business, a local office, or another physical location utilized by the business.
The ID number for most individuals will be their social security number or Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN). For business entities, the number will usually be their Employer Identification number (EIN). Foreign businesses without ID numbers can be verified by alternative government-issued documents.
Customer Due Diligence (CDD)
Due diligence includes collecting all relevant information on a customer from trusted sources, determining what the customer will be using financial services for, and maintaining ongoing surveillance of the situation to further verify that customer activity remains in line with recorded customer information.
The goal of this phase of the know your customer process is to assess the risks a potential customer might pose and assign them to one of three categories — low, medium, or high risk.
Several variables — including the customer’s expected cash transactions, the type of business, source of income, and location — will help determine the customer’s risk level.
Other categories for assessing risk include the customer’s business industry, whether they use a foreign or domestic account, and their past financial history. The customer is also screened against politically exposed persons (PEP) and Office of Foreign Assets Control’s (OFAC) sanctions lists.
Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD)
Enhanced due diligence (EDD) involves increased monitoring of customers deemed to be high-risk. This may include customers from high-risk third countries, those with political exposure, or those that have existing relationships with financial competitors.
Conducting enhanced due diligence on high-risk business entities requires identifying all beneficiaries of those entities when they open an account. Customers that are legal entities are those that have had legal documentation filed with a Secretary of State or other state office, and include:
• Limited liability companies (LLC)
• Corporations
• Business trusts
• General partnerships
• Limited partnerships
• Any other entity created via filing with a state office or formed under the laws of a jurisdiction outside of the US
On May 11, 2018, a new AML/KYC requirement came into effect. This change to KYC laws states that all banking and non-banking firms subject to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) must verify the identity of beneficiaries of legal entity customers when they open an account.
Firms must also develop risk profiles and continually monitor these customers. This must be done regardless of what risk category the customer falls into.
Due diligence is an ongoing process and requires financial institutions to constantly update customer profiles and monitor account activity.
What Are the Steps Involved in KYC?
There are five main steps of complying with the know your customer rule. These include:
• Customer Identification Program (CIP)
• Customer due diligence (CDD)
• Enhanced due diligence (EDD)
• Account opening
• Annual review
Opening an account and conducting an annual review occur after it has been determined that a customer is eligible for financial services.
The higher risk category a customer falls into, the more often their activities will be reviewed.
What Are the Four Key Elements of a KYC Policy?
KYC compliance involves four key elements. When gathering KYC information, organizations must:
• Identify their customers
• Verify that the customer’s ID is true and valid
• Understand their customer’s source of funding and activities
• Monitor the activities of their customers
Monitoring of customer activities is an ongoing process, particularly for high-risk clients. Most firms review clients based on their level of risk.
Low-risk clients might only be reviewed once every two or three years, moderate-risk clients every one to two years, while high-risk clients tend to be reviewed once a year or even once every six months.
The Takeaway
KYC, or know your customer, is a regulation that helps financial institutions prevent fraud by their customers. KYC involves constant check-ups and ongoing measures to ensure customer information and account profiles are kept up-to-date.
With the need for KYC compliance growing, and regulations becoming more onerous, an increasing amount of this work is done by automated systems utilizing artificial intelligence. A number of fintech companies have sprung up in recent years to fill this market need.
KYC and AML laws have taken on special importance in the cryptocurrency sector, which has been largely unregulated for most of its existence. More and more companies in the space have begun complying with these types of regulations.
The more investors know, the better equipped they are to make informed financial decisions for themselves. With the SoFi Invest® brokerage, you can build your portfolio by trading your choice of stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), cryptocurrency, and Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), all with minimal fees.
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