encompass brings KYC solutions to Japan through Nikkei partnership

encompass, which automates information and news discovery for Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, has partnered with Nikkei Media Marketing.

Regulatory activity in Japan is increasing following the introduction of the Act on Prevention of Criminal Proceeds in 2016, and in the run up to the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) planned Mutual Evaluation in 2019.

Along with other anti-money laundering (AML) measures, the Criminal Proceeds Act has set out new standards for regulated firms for customer onboarding and monitoring, including Know Your Customer, Customer Due Diligence and Enhanced Due Diligence, following earlier criticism from FATF on the government’s approach to AML.

Firm are now increasing the amount of time and money spent on gathering the data for KYC checks. As a manual process, this can take several hours per case, but by robotically automating this process, encompass claims to reduce that to minutes.

“In a more stringent regulatory environment we are seeing increased demand for solutions that can drive efficiency in compliance operations,” commented Nikkei Media Marketing CEO, Yutaka Omura, “For this reason, we are excited about the possibilities for the encompass technology in Japan, and to drive sales of the solution in the market”.

Encompass enables firms to improve the quality of their KYC by giving them the full picture of a customer for safer, more informed decisions.

It also claims to reduce the cost of KYC, by eradicating valuable hours wasted on repetitive, manual tasks, and gives full control of KYC, with full automation ensuring policies and procedures are consistently enforced. The company also claims to improve customer experience by reducing onboarding times from up to four hours to just four minutes.

“The increasing regulatory burden faced by Japan’s banks and other regulated firms is driving the need for innovative technology solutions to streamline the Know Your Customer process,” says Paul Charmatz, encompass managing director, “We’re delighted to partner with a company as well-known and respected as Nikkei Media Marketing to bring our innovative robotic process automation technology to the Japanese market”.

Earlier this month, encompass announced a new partnership with Wisers Information Limited, a provider of Chinese media and business intelligence. In March 2018, encompass also launched operations in Hong Kong to better meet increasing demand for their KYC automation solution.

Insolvency practitioner ipd also formed a partnered with encompass to support and enhance KYC compliance processes. The company works with a wide range of businesses, ranging from sole-traders, family-run companies and SMEs through to large multi-million pound groups of companies.

Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst

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