The concept of Know Your Customer (KYC) is, today, well-understood: it is, essentially, a standard due diligence process used by financial institutions to gather background information on prospective customers. As well as being a legal and regulatory requirement, KYC is a good business practice, allowing institutions to authenticate customer IDs and reduce risk. But, simple though KYC may be in principle, it can present difficulties in practice. This is because, today, each system gathers its own data, and cannot re-use information already collected by other systems. For customers, this means the frustration of having to repeat processes; for institutions, it creates duplication of data, which may not even reconcile. While some systems are turning to DLT to resolve this issue, there is still fragmentation, and it can be impossible to uniquely identify customers.
With Overledger OS, these issues are removed at source. This is because Overledger can connect disparate DLT and other “Open Banking” based data stores, to provide a single view of customers. It can also allow institutions to share KYC data, by tracking individual identities across connected platforms.
There are many benefits of this. By removing much of the friction from the product application process, for example, institutions can acquire customers more quickly and easily than their competitors. And consumers gain, too – from faster, easier access to better deals, and lower barriers to switching products. Overledger OS also allows older institutions to compete, in terms of customer experience, with neobanks and fintechs, helping to protect their market share.
