SWIFT announces that six additional global banks have signed up to jointly develop its Know Your Customer (KYC) Registry, a centralised repository that maintains a standardised set of information about banks required for due diligence processes.

Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Erste Group Bank AG, HSBC, ING and Raiffeisen Bank International AG are the latest banks to sign up to the SWIFT-led KYC initiative, bringing the total number of participating banks to twelve. These institutions join Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi, Commerzbank, J.P.Morgan, Societe Generale and Standard Chartered, whose participation in the KYC initiative was  announced in March 2014.

SWIFT Registry working group

The twelve banks have been participating in a SWIFT-led working group to agree the Registry's processes as well as the documentation and data that will fulfil most of the basic KYC requirements across multiple jurisdictions. A number of working group banks are already populating the Registry with their own relevant KYC information, and user testing of the Registry's secure, web-based platform is ongoing. Starting in September, an additional group of major banks will begin contributing their company data, helping to ensure a rich set of information is available when the SWIFT KYC Registry goes live at the end of the year.

The KYC Registry is a initiative by SWIFT that was developed in collaboration with the financial industry and will help banks manage their compliance challenges and reduce the high costs associated with implementing KYC-related regulations. The principle behind SWIFT's KYC Registry is that each user will have a standardised access point to obtain details on their counterparties, while remaining in control of their own information and which institutions can view it.

SWIFT's KYC Registry is currently in pilot and expected to go live at the end of 2014.

Other KYC services

The race is on to sign up as many banks as possible. Some banks - Citi, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and SocGen- have signed up for more than one service. The known bank members per service, are:

• SWIFT KYC Registry: Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Citi, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, Erste Group Bank AG, HSBC, ING, J.P.Morgan, Societe Generale, Raiffeisen Bank International AG and Standard Chartered. 
• Genpact/Markit: Citi, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Morgan Stanley
• Thomson Reuters KYC services: not known 
• KYC Exchange Net service: DZ, SocGen 
• IdenTrust KYC Exchange Service: BAML, Citi, RBS, LBG,Wells Fargo,Intesa NAG and others

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CTMfile take: The issue still remains: Will the corporates let their information be recorded on these exchanges, see.