Hong Kong-based regtech Know Your Customer has made its Company Registry Solution available through HKMA's Commercial Data Interchange. This collaboration represents a significant step in HKMA's efforts to enhance efficiency in the banking system and promote financial inclusion in Hong Kong.

The CDI is an advanced financial data infrastructure designed to eliminate the need for multiple individual connections between banks and data providers. In essence, CDI facilitates a single connection for each bank and data provider, simplifying data sharing to a high degree. Within the CDI framework, Know Your Customer offers seamless and automated access to the Hong Kong Companies Registry (HKCR) and the Inland Revenue Department (IRD), along with access to official registries in over 130 countries worldwide.

Know Your Customer employs proprietary technology to provide compliance teams at banks and regulated institutions with real-time access to official company documents, such as certificates of incorporation and annual returns. Furthermore, this solution is able to extract shareholder and company details from these documents in a structured format, expediting entity structure mapping and ultimate beneficial owner (UBO) identification for anti-money laundering purposes. By integrating Know Your Customer through CDI, financial institutions in Hong Kong gain the ability to improve the efficiency and accuracy of their Know Your Business (KYB) and UBO checks.

This integration facilitates digital transformation, which can potentially result in an improved customer experience for both local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large multinational corporations (MNCs). In the official press release, representatives from Know Your Customer expressed optimism regarding the potential of regtech adoption within the financial services sector, particularly within HKMA's progressive approach. They referred to the CDI as one of several proactive initiatives aimed at promoting regtech adoption across the industry.

The integration of Know Your Customer into HKMA's Commercial Data Interchange underscores the significance of real-time registry access and primary source data in maintaining ongoing compliance, as per regulatory standards. Other developments from Know Your Customer In August 2023, Know Your Customer partnered with MineSec, a white-label SoftPOS solution provider, to improve the onboarding experience of its SoftPOS solution. The partnership allowed MineSec and its client base to utilize Know Your Customer's modular compliance technology to verify onboarding merchants in real-time.

This ensured accurate company documentation to identify their ownership structure and unravel ultimate beneficial owners (UBO). By collaborating with Know Your Customer, MineSec gained the ability to offer a more dependable and reliable solution to its customers, which helped contribute to a safe and secure ecosystem for its users. .