Know Your Customer (KYC) or Know Your Business (KYB) is the concept of identifying an individual, for KYC, or a business, for KYB, before entering a business relationship. The ability to verify the identity of a person or a company prior to any business arrangements or customer on-boarding can help you mitigate risks.
KYC is often tied closely with Anti-Money Laundering (AML), you verify and confirm the identity of an individual or business in order to ensure a business relationship is not misused. One of the most efficient and effective tools on today's market, to verify identity and to ensure compliance, is Electronic Identity Verification (eIDV).
It is important to understand the specifications of eIDV and to recognise how it may be used to help with KYC and KYB procedures and protocols.
What is Electronic Identity Verification?
Electronic Identity Verification, or eIDV, is the process of using digital methods for standard and comprehensive KYC and KYB compliance checks. Private companies are increasingly using eIDV services to instantly confirm the identity of an individual or an entity, such as a company.
Identity is confirmed via an instant cross-reference with a database, providing match or no match results. So how does eIDV help?
Electronic Identity Verification takes into consideration a person`s name, address, ID and other factors (depending on the country of origin), standard information that users input when creating accounts for forex, online gaming, for fintech companies, e-commerce sites and more.
With the aforementioned information, databases are meticulously and, instantly, scanned until a result is found, either a match, and thus, a verification, or a no match, and thus, a non-verification. The user would then be able to proceed to create the account, or not, depending on the result.
The Importance of Identity Verification
Using a quality and trusted eIDV service to confirm identities will enhance your on-boarding procedures whilst staying compliant and mitigating risks. Naturally, consumers are unaware and unconcerned with business policy, data protection and regulatory pressures faced by businesses; they expect a quick and easy service when conducting business online.
Using eIDV, your customers get an enhanced service whilst your company adheres to compliance and regulatory rules. Keeping your company compliant with identity verification will bolster trust and transparency for your company.
Organizations of all types rely on identity for compliance reasons, to help mitigate the risk of fraud, and to build trust and safety of their services. With better identity frameworks, these organizations can lower costs, lower risk, improve their ability to expand into new markets, and better build trust with customers, employees, suppliers, third-parties, and all their connections.
Moreover, reputational consequences are, arguably, at an all-time high, with the increasing importance of online media and news, it is important to have a strong and trusted reputation. Without indulging in proper compliance protocols your company`s reputation can be majorly affected, which may deter new business potentials.
Data is another factor that has massively grown in importance over the last decade, and making sure data is properly handled and verified is an important role that each company must take part in, without it, you can lose all credibility and trust from clients, investors and more. Therefore, we must ask, how does the KYC and KYB process work?
Identity Verification For The KYC and KYB Process
1) Connect to a Database Provider
First and foremost, before you can even begin to verify data, you need to have access to a system, to a database, that has already collated and cleaned the data, ready to be used.
However, you also need to know what type of data you are looking for. For example, at Cedar Rose, we specialise in the Middle East, Romania and Russia, we have quality data on individuals and companies for companies to use our database and perform identity verification checks.
Connecting to our database can also be done via API, directly from our system to yours. The data has been translated and is available for checking in either native (eg; Arabic, Cyrillic) and Romanised characters.
2) User-Side Input
Whether you are an e-commerce company, forex, gaming or more, your users will have to input data at some point of your process that will then need to be verified. Such data can be, first name, last name, address, identification data and so on, depending on the country in question.
3) Identification Data Checked
The inputted data will then be checked across the database that you`ve connected through via API. Depending on the data inputted, the check will be for either KYC or KYB. Cedar Rose holds a database of over 160 million individuals and over 12 million companies; this data is instantly checked through eIDV.
4) Instant Verification Results
The final step of the identity verification process is the result that is returned. If the inputted data was found in the database, then it is a match`, and therefore you have verified the legitimacy of the individual or company. However, if it is a 'no match', then the individual or company has not been verified. The eIDV service returns one of these two results, for accuracy and speed. The user would then be able to proceed or not, depending on the result.
Cedar Rose Electronic Identity Verification
Cedar Rose has been compiling data for over 23 years, from the hardest of regions, such as the Middle East where, in some cases, data is not even digitalised yet at the official sources. We have collected and cleaned this data and presented it in a standardised, easy to use and easy to access database for our clients.
We offer vast data on individuals in the Middle East, Romania and Russia and data on companies across the MENA region.
We source our data from a variety of places such as: official records, local records, public records and credit rating agencies. Our databases are easily accessed via our API and are suited for international clientele, scalability, and for instant results. If you have a large influx of entities to be verified, our scalable database can handle your requests.
We offer a service that can provide a smooth, efficient and most importantly compliant on-boarding process. If you would like to know more about how we can help, contact us or check out our eidv page for more information.