The partnership is setting the foundations to support PAOB meeting the increasing demand for quick-to-access banking services by local SMEs through the provision of a highly scalable and cloud-native solution.

The new system, developed by CRIF and Know Your Customer, leverages real-time registry connections to automatically retrieve documents and map shareholders. This provides a centralised solution that integrates data from multiple official sources into one place, allowing PAOB to streamline the SME onboarding process and facilitate the customer due diligence process whilst reducing costs and manual work.

CRIF and Know Your Customer’s joint offering provides digital banks and financial institutions with a one-stop solution that addresses their client onboarding and on-going monitoring requirements. The solution draws on unique strengths from both sides to empower digital banks and financial institutions with all the compliance tools they need. CRIF offers an extensive portfolio of business data and intelligence, including credit data; open banking; and Environmental, Social and Governance data. Meanwhile, Know Your Customer provides unmatched coverage of real-time registry connections, Ultimate Beneficial Owner mapping across borders, and modular workflow capabilities.

Jamie Anderson, Global Head of Sales at Know Your Customer, said, “We have seen time and time again how the modular design and unique set-up of our solutions are especially compatible with the needs of virtual and digital banks in Hong Kong and globally. We are delighted to be working with our partner CRIF to support PAOB’s vision of outstanding SME onboarding and next-generation digital compliance and we look forward to supporting their growth in Hong Kong and across the APAC region.”

Ivan Chow, Head of Strategy & Partnerships of PAOB, is pleased with this partnership, “Since our successful launch in 2020, we have been thriving our virtual banking services for local SMEs and we significantly expedited the bank account opening and loan approval processes. And this is well-received from our SME customers, especially when the SME sector was generally impacted most amidst the pandemic. Given Hong Kong is now opening up, we believe the SMEs would be benefited from the economic rebound and recovery, and the demand for operating capital financing is likely increased. The partnership with CRIF and Know Your Customer will further enhance our customer-centric experience to the SME customers.”

With over 360,000 SMEs representing more than 98% of total businesses in the city, SMEs are of crucial importance to the development of the economy in Hong Kong.