For every financial institution, Customer Identification Program (CIP) and Customer Due Diligence (CDD) is just something you do, and the two go hand in hand. After-all how can you perform effective due diligence if you don’t know who you are dealing with in the first place?
Here are 3 tips to help streamline how you collect your data:
Tip 1: Be meticulous about the data you collect
Data collected at the account opening stage forms the foundation for building the customer’s account profile and record, so ensuring you get the right information at the start of the relationship is key. You can achieve this by:
- Using a digital form to collect the customer’s personal details at the account application stage.
- Making essential fields on the form required to ensure you get all the data you need.
Clients are able to complete their applications at any place and at any time – making it a lot more convenient and secure.
Tip 2: Provide customers with instant feedback on data capture mistakes
One the biggest frustrations for both your BSA team and customers is back and forth communication due to wrong or incomplete information. If poorly managed these delays can result in customer drop-off. To avoid this from happening:
- Enable shape-checking functionality on the digital form. This will help to eliminate human error by requiring certain fields to only accept data in a particular format and will provide the customer instant feedback when a mistake is made. By providing instant feedback, not only will your compliance team be happy but your customer’s will be too as the required fields will eliminate time spent going back and forth. Examples of some fields to check include:
- Contact number has the correct number of digits
- Email address is in a valid format
- Address & zip is in a valid format
- Tax ID number is in the correct format with the correct amount of digits
- SSN is in the correct format with the correct number of digits
Tip 3: Make it easy for your customers to sign their application forms
Enable digital signing to allow customers to sign the form from anywhere at any time. This is particularly useful when there is more than one party needing to sign.
- Digital signatures offer you more security as each signed document has a unique “fingerprint” embedded in the document, plus every action on the document is time and date stamped with a permanent audit trail
- The application form is automatically digitally stored
Implementing these simple tips will help to streamline your account opening and CIP process, allow you to collect quality data upfront and improve your customer’s experience.
There are a number of form filler and digital signing tools which are easy to use and implement. Some solutions to consider are:
It is important to remember that when choosing the best tool to take the vendor through a vendor due diligence process. Ensure the data stored by the vendor is safe and secure and that the vendor has appropriate controls in place, as evidenced by a SOC Certificate or equivalent.
