UK risk and compliance practice · KYC and AML reviews for financial-services firms and other UK organisations
A 13-Step KYC and AML Case Platform for a UK Compliance Practice
The weakest step decides how good a KYC file is: a director nobody found in Companies House, a news story that went unscreened, an ID nobody ever checked. We built a UK compliance practice its own case management platform from scratch. It takes every case through 13 steps and holds registers, screening, ID checks, evidence and QA together. It started as an internal accelerator and was later sold as a product.
- Industry
- Professional Services
- Function
- Legal & Compliance
- Region
- United Kingdom
Results
- 13
- steps structure each KYC case
- In order by default, deviation under control. A scope figure, not a saving.
- 3
- roles that keep duties separate
- Project manager, analyst and QA. The person who prepares a step never validates it.
- 2
- UK public registers in every case
- Companies House and the Charity Commission, plus KYC information portals.
01
The challenge
We worked for a risk and compliance practice in the UK. It reviews clients for AML (anti-money laundering) and KYC (know your customer), using its own methodology, for financial-services firms and other UK organisations.
These reviews come in high volumes, need a lot of evidence and get audited. When the work lives in spreadsheets, shared drives and email, each case relies on the analyst not forgetting a single step.
Where the gaps were
- Parties left out. A director, partner or connected company that never got pulled from the register is exactly the gap a regulator finds.
- Identities not verified. Personal details were not checked against the ID documents supplied.
- Evidence all over the place. Screenshots, register extracts and screening results sat in separate locations, and a reviewer could not see the full case.
- No record of who did what. With no roles, one person could both prepare and approve a case.
- No portfolio view. Managers had no way to see which cases were stuck, overdue or unfinished.
02
What we did
We designed and built the platform from scratch around the practice's own methodology. Every KYC case is broken into 13 steps, each step gets its data and automation, and every piece of evidence and every decision stays in one place. The practice also uses it to run its KYC and AML engagements as projects.
13 steps, in order unless there is a reason
Cases go through the 13 steps in sequence. If a case has to take a step out of turn, the deviation is controlled, and no step disappears without a trace.
Inside a single case
- Intake from the client. The company under review supplies its information. It is gathered and keyed into the case, and automation fills the inputs.
- Public registers. Data is drawn from KYC information portals and from two UK public registers: the Charity Commission and Companies House.
- Connected parties. People and organisations linked to the subject are mapped inside the case, including officers and managing partners taken from Companies House.
- ID checks. ID documents are gathered and checked for validity, and related parties' personal details are validated against them.
- Screening. Screening covers news sources, search engines and other publicly available information, and the results are attached to the case.
- One home for evidence. Every piece of evidence is uploaded to and managed within the case.
- QA and completeness. Both automatic and manual QA, plus tracking of whether each case is finished.
- KYC report. Each case produces a complete KYC output.
Who does what
There are three roles: analyst, QA and project manager. The person who prepares a step cannot be the one who validates it.
Ready for automation, open to oversight
- Space for automation. Steps are designed so that automations can take on repetitive work and assist the analyst.
- Cross-case reporting. BI built into the platform, plus custom metrics, gives managers a project management view of the full case portfolio.
What we built
| Layer | Component |
|---|---|
| Application | Case management platform, custom built from scratch |
| Workflow | Role-based engine running 13 steps, with controlled deviation |
| Data sources | KYC information portals; UK public registers (Companies House, Charity Commission) |
| Screening | News sources and search engines |
| Evidence and identity | ID document verification, management of documents and evidence |
| Reporting | Custom metrics and BI inside the platform |
03
The outcome
Running a KYC case is now structured, easy to follow and the same whichever analyst does it.
| Manual | On the platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Steps in a case | Whatever the analyst recalled | 13 steps in order, deviation controlled |
| Connected parties | Pulled manually, easily missed | Mapped inside the case, officers taken from Companies House |
| ID checks | Details not always matched to the IDs | Related parties checked against the ID documents supplied |
| Evidence | Scattered over drives and inboxes | Held in the case |
| Preparer and approver | Possibly one person | Separate roles with built-in QA |
| Overview of all cases | Not available | BI and metrics across all cases, in the platform |
- Case work is structured and consistent from one analyst to the next.
- Roles enforce segregation of duties, and automatic and manual QA are part of the flow.
- Live in production, running cases and projects for KYC and AML engagements serving financial-services firms and other UK organisations.
- An accelerator that became a product. Built for internal use, the platform was later sold as a product in its own right and counted as a deciding factor in winning the KYC and AML bids it was included in.
- We report scope, not savings. Nobody measured time per case or case volumes; the numbers here describe the platform itself.
Where KYC tools break
The happy path is easy. KYC tools fail on the exceptions: a trust with no record at Companies House, a director whose name is spelled two ways, a case where step 7 must come before step 5. Make the workflow rigid and analysts go back to spreadsheets. Have no workflow and steps get skipped. Our platform makes the sequence the default, lets cases deviate under control and puts QA and completeness checks in plain view, so flexibility never costs a step.
Built with
The platforms and tools this engagement runs on.
Scope
Industries
Business functions
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