(Image source: eID homepage.)
Pegasystems Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.) has announced the integration of new facial recognition and identification capabilities within its Pega Know Your Customer (KYC) and Pega Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) applications. The new capability, available immediately, is powered by technology from Electronic IDentification (eID, Madrid), enables insurers and financial institutions to legally and securely verify the identity of new customers in just minutes, according to the vendor announcement.
Tom King, Senior Director, Insurance, Pegasystems.
“KYC is applicable across the entire insurance industry and most insurers have taken steps to remain in compliance to regulations,” comments Tom King, Senior Director, Insurance, Pegasystems. “Pega has seen a surge of interest in KYC recently as a result of insurers’ desire to improve their KYC processes in order to minimize the operational impact of KYC and improve compliance.
“We see facial recognition as a logical next step to both improving compliance and as a way for insurers to make the KYC process less onerous for individuals,” King continues. “Insurers are looking for capabilities such as facial recognition as part of their overall digital transformation strategy and as alternative to other methods of verification.”
Pega notes that client onboarding and verification can take a financial institution more than 100 days for institutional customers and multiple days for retail customers—significantly slowing time to revenue and affecting customer experience. The vendor’s reports that its new capabilities let institutions streamline traditional paper and face-to-face verification processes with video identification for underlying parties in less than two minutes. By using both Pega KYC and Pega CLM, financial institutions can digitize the entire onboarding process end to end—from client adoption, product and jurisdiction onboarding, and KYC, to legal, fulfillment, and offboarding—by integrating facial recognition into a CLM solution for the first time in the industry, according to the vendor.
Biometrics, AI, and Optical Character Recognition
The capability works by having clients simply record a short video of their face and their identification using any video-capable device either at home or in the branch. Pega’s partner Electronic IDentification uses advanced biometrics, AI, and optical character recognition (OCR) to match the individual’s face with their legal documentation, such as a passport, to quickly and accurately confirm their identity. The process complies with any eID-supported legal ID card and all major international regulations, including Electronic Identification Authentication and Trust Services (eIDAS), Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Financial Action Task Force (FATF), and new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Pega says.
Pega reports that it has also introduced a number of new capabilities designed to help businesses stay up to date with the latest KYC regulations and streamline onboarding front to back office:
- Intelligent automated event-driven review drives further efficiency: Pega further automates client refresh and change of circumstance – triggered by external data provider or internal customer data changes – to automatically drive auto-case creation, refresh, or auto-resolution through pre-built intelligence.
- Deeper automation and optimization with third-party data and utilities speeds case processing: Pega enables relationship managers to open a new onboarding case pre-populated with data from various third-party sources – such as Thomson Reuters World-Check One, Verified Entity Data as a Service (formerly Avox), Clarient, IHS Markit’s Kyc.com, and Equifax – to drive further automation.
- Onboarding initiation from mobile devices allows for faster onboarding: Relationship managers can now initiate new onboarding cases for clients from any mobile device in just minutes, automatically routing through front to back office with pre-built rules, processes, and target operating model.
- Pega KYC Regulatory Rules Engine updates ahead of deadlines: Pega updated its regulatory rules engine to include EU member state local adoption of the 4th EU Money Laundering Directive and the proposed 5th EU Money Laundering Directive requirements, all with pre-built logic, allowing end banks to stay ahead of regulatory change in minutes instead of months.
The vendor characterizes Pega CLM and Pega KYC as the only cross line of business, globally scalable applications for large complex financial institutions with pre-defined industry best practices for onboarding and KYC. The solution suite provides industry leading UI/UX from sales through to the customer, with inherent robotics and AI and a fully optimized target operating model. The vendor asserts that these applications can be deployed at the world’s largest institutions in as little as three months to speed time to revenue with new and existing clients.
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