Would you let a bank post your and your company’s details on a general KYC exchange, even if it was run by SWIFT? Would your bank trust details that were posted by another bank? 

Current providers of KYC document exchange service are starting to ask why it is necessary to re-invent the wheel, when, as William Laraque, Managing Director at US-International Trade Services, writes in LinkedIn, “both the formal and informal information sharing that take place within the structure of the international factor's chain has worked so well and provides a pilot for how the banking industry can establish a secure platform for the sharing of customer information?”

Too many agencies? Which, if any, do you trust?

There are now five KYC platforms - the international factor’s informal KYC services, the recently announced Thomson Reuters KYC service, the new SWIFT initiative, the KYC Exchange, and Identrust’s KYC Exchange. 

This raises some serious questions for corporate treasurers to answer?

• Is this too many agencies? What number is just right - one, two?
• Would you trust any with your KYC information? If so, which would you trust? One, or two, or three?

It’s all a matter of trust which is only established over many years, as the international factor groups have found.

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CTMfile take: The problem is that the demand for KYC information is going to grow for many years, as banks and the authorities struggle to control the global fraud epidemic. Corporate treasurers are going to have to decide which utility(s) they will do business with. Sending off photocopies of passports, etc. won’t work for much longer.