FactSet, a provider of integrated financial information, analytical applications and other services, has released a cloud-based software-as-a-service app that helps financial institutions to know their customers.

The new RegTech app combines KYC or “know your customer” robotic process automation with proprietary 'content' from the firm and information from public registries. Users can:

• automate repetitive activities;
• execute various policies consistently;
• gain access to the data they need about corporate hierarchies, beneficial owners and sanctions; and
• analyse risks that pertain to customers and countries reliably and at speed;
• apply risk indicators;
• schedule automated reviews of customers; and
• generate a complete, exportable audit trail.

The firm believes that FactSet KYC, the cloud-based SaaS app in question, will help banks streamline their KYC activity. In their phrase, they call this "reducing time to revenue," which suggests that they hope that the onboarding process will be faster. Many firms, they note in passing, still do these jobs manually. They are also convinced that the service will be cheaper to use than its older counterparts.

The items of 'reference data' that FactSet gathers include NACE (an acronym used for the various statisticaly classifications of economic activities developed since 1970 in what is now the European Union), LEIs (Legal Entity Identifiers, 20-character, alpha-numeric codes that uniquely identify entities that engage in financial transactions in accordance with the EU's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive or MiFID II), and CICs (Complimentary Identification Codes, important for Solvency II, another EU directive), and thousands of other reference data items about entities that firms require if they are to obey Solvency II, the US Financial Accounts Tax Compliance Act 2010 and MIFID II.