Case study from December 2022
The cooperative development mandate and regional roots are key components of the business model of Rosenheim-based "meine Volksbank Raiffeisenbank eG". The interests of members and customers are at the center of the bank's thoughts and actions, which is not interested in short-term deals but in long-term partnerships. Its members are both users and owners of "meine Volksbank Raiffeisenbank eG" and can have an active say in decisions.
Regulatory requirements and due diligence obligations in relation to combating money laundering and terrorist financing are becoming increasingly complex. This also applies to Rosenheim-based "meine Volksbank Raiffeisenbank eG". In accordance with the German Money Laundering Act (GwG), it is obliged to account for its customers.
"Know Your Customer" (KYC) describes all the necessary steps to identify and check customers accordingly. This process can be very time-consuming, not least due to internal requirements.
The manual KYC process of "meine Volksbank Raiffeisenbank eG" was time-consuming and cost-intensive and required a high level of expertise on the part of bank employees. With a duration of between two hours and several weeks, it was hardly scalable, costly for everyone involved and also hindered the bank's growth.
In the case of an error-free process, the bank experienced the following processing times:
- Processing time at the MSC (Market Service Center): 30 minutes
- Processing time on the market (= customer advisor): 60 minutes
- Manual audit procedures in the QS (quality system): 15 minutes
However, these "optimal" processing times could rarely be realized. On average, there were around two error logs per new customer entered in the register. The processing of these therefore resulted in additional costs, such as the procurement of missing documents in the case of incomplete data or, for example, the checks required to prevent money laundering or, in extreme cases, the blocking of unclear beneficial owners.
In order to simplify the KYC process for both advisors and customers, corporate customers should be able to be created automatically and with the least possible effort in the core banking system agree21. The aim was and is to reduce the previous effort by two thirds in the medium term.
The KYCnow platform enables MLA obligors such as "meine Volksbank Raiffeisenbank eG" to generate fully digital KYC files with all relevant information easily and without great effort. This is possible thanks to an automated process that combines, among other things, the determination of beneficial owners, linkage information and creditworthiness data.
SCHUFA and the bank jointly developed a customized solution to enable the KYC data to be retrieved in the core banking system: thanks to a smart application route, the corporate customer can be easily searched for and created with little effort.
When the information is transferred to agree21, which is carried out by a "robot" (RPA) of the bank, the company, including its managing directors and beneficial owners, is created directly.
With the help of the developed application route, customer advisors can now easily find companies via a search bar and can onboard new corporate customers with just a few mouse clicks.
For example, a GmbH is automatically created with its managing director, shareholders and beneficial owners with a customer number and bank details. Corresponding debit and credit cards are also ordered directly.
The automated and accelerated KYC process benefits new customers in particular: bank advisors can immediately start talking to customers while the "robot" runs through the entire process independently in the background.
So far, the RPA solution of "meine Volksbank Raiffeisenbank eG" is unique in the cooperative banking world; however, KYCnow saves time and resources when closing cases even without robots.
Where technology takes over standard tasks, employees can be deployed more effectively. In addition, the savings open up scope for attractive customer conditions.
Compliance with MLA requirements
Automated and accelerated KYC process
Simple creation of customers directly in agree21
Find out more about Know Your Customer and how we can support you with the AMLA requirements.