Protiviti teams up with Appway to automate anti-money laundering processes

Management and technology Protiviti has entered into an alliance with Appway, a software developer for financial institutions. The pair have unveiled a new service that streamlines and automates Know Your Customer (KYC) programs in anti-money laundering processes.

The battle to eliminate rote, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks continues in the brave new age of automation.

One particularly resource-intensive task for financial institutions is the KYC portion of the anti-money laundering process. The task entails periodic review of customer information, including time-consuming manual processes to perform customer due diligence, as well as enhanced due diligence for higher-risk customers.

Analysts have to perform repetitive manual tasks – logging into dozens of systems, requesting customer information, and reviewing and summarizing data. With multiple disconnected data sources, companies will spend approximately 80% of the periodic review process on data collection and consolidation and only 20% on analysis.

Protiviti and Appway’s new solution aims to unshackle analysts from rote data gathering, allowing them to spend more time on analysis and decision-making. The solution consolidates data collection, review, aggregation, and validation into one automated system. The system also automates searches for negative news, sanctions, and internal blacklists, while streamlining the Request for Information process – with requests systematically generated and tracked.

“As a result, financial institutions get better quality information faster with more consistency and at a lower cost,” Vishal Ranjane, Protiviti managing director, risk and compliance, said. “The customer experience also improves because banks' customers no longer receive unnecessary or conflicting requests for information that they've previously provided to the financial institution.”

Protiviti combined their extensive anti-money laundering consulting experience with Switzerland-based Appway’s 15 years of financial sector software development expertise to develop the automation solution.

The solution also cuts down on human error and untimely reporting, while providing enhanced dashboarding capabilities that provide more detailed and accurate metrics.

Ultimately, the technology allows analysts to be analysts instead of data monkeys. “The automation of manual and operational tasks frees up significant time for compliance workers and in turn allows them to dedicate time to more value-adding activities,” Nina Schneider, head of solutions and products at Appway, said.

Related: Economist Peter Henry joins Protiviti advisory board