February 5, 2024

What is the Difference Between KYC and AML?

As the financial industry moved to web services and the world overall became more interconnected, rules had to be put in place to keep banks and their clients protected. The two critical concepts that emerged are called Know Your Customer(KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering(AML).

These two processes are almost always used in conjunction, which can lead to some confusion as to which is which. Since both are crucial regulatory elements, it is essential that wealth management offices understand the differences between KYC and AML.

Not only are KYC and AML critical processes for any wealth management firm, but they can also be an important Achilles’ heel if not handled properly. A recent study found that over 40% of customers abandon an onboarding process when it takes over 10 minutes.

This article will go over the differences between KYC and AML, and explain how Mako Fintech can help you speed up these processes to keep your customers engaged.

Understanding Anti-Money Laundering (AML)

AML is the set of laws, regulations and procedures put in place by the government to prevent criminally obtained funds from being disguised or transferred between accounts to mask them from tax collection.

Every single player within the financial ecosystem is bound by AML regulations, but wealth management offices have an increased responsibility since they oversee the initial data-gathering operation.

In order to enforce these regulations, players in the financial industry must collect information and run checks such as:

Transaction Monitoring: Financial institutions monitor customer transactions to detect patterns and maneuvers typically found in money laundering or tax evasion schemes.
Regulatory Reporting: wealth management offices are required to run checks on their clients and report any suspicious findings to the appropriate authorities, such as the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) in Canada.
Compliance Programs: AML regulations must be governed by a comprehensive internal compliance program that must include nominating a Chief Compliance Officer and selecting technology to execute and streamline the AML verification activities.

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AML measures have been in constant evolution since their implementations. This flexibility has been implemented by governments in order to respond to the rapidly changing nature of money laundering techniques, as well as regulatory landscapes.

What is Know Your Customer (KYC)?

KYC is the data-gathering process required to open a client account, verify the client’s identity, assess risks related to the account opening and comply with AML requirements.

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While KYC is often considered a part of AML, it’s an important process in its own right since it is often the first impression you give to your clients. Beyond regulatory requirements, having a streamlined KYC process is seen positively by new clients and showcases a firm’s commitment to technology.

Here are the key aspects of KYC:

Identify and Verify Customer Identity: Financial institutions collect information such as names, addresses, and identification numbers to verify a customer's identity.
Understand Customer Behaviour: Financial institutions assess the customer's financial circumstances and records to understand the customer's profile and behaviour.
Assess Money Laundering Risks: Based on the information gathered, institutions assess the potential of their customers to engage in money laundering.

A well-rounded, accurate KYC process is not only a regulatory requirement; it is also a crucial step to allow wealth management firms to know their customers better and evaluate new services they might offer based on the information gathered.

Interplay Between KYC and AML

KYC and AML are often mistaken for each other simply because they are intrinsically linked. The data gathered during the KYC process is what is parsed during AML checks to assess risk levels and discover illegal transactions. Here is a list of the most important KYC and AML synergies:

Regulatory Compliance: The data gathered in the KYC process is essential to execute AML checks. A good KYC process also provides an auditable process for other regulatory requirements.
Risk Management: KYC allows institutions to assess the risk of individual clients in terms of money laundering.
Operational Implementation: If a KYC process is missing certain steps, the effectiveness of the AML process is severely hamstrung. In fact, wealth management offices with incomplete KYC processes can face hefty fines if they cannot comply with every step of AML verifications.

Challenges and Technological Solutions for KYC and AML

Since the KYC/AML process is quite tedious by hand, implementing measures to automate and digitize these tasks is often the first technological advancement a wealth management office puts in place.

Here are the most important aspects to keep in mind while you are evaluating this process:

Data Management: The KYC and AML process requires a large amount of sensitive data to be gathered. Ensure you have those capacities, or select a technological partner that will do it for you.
Evolving Regulatory Landscape: The regulations around KYC and AML don’t change often, but it does happen. For that reason, your KYC process needs to be fairly flexible to react to these potential changes.
Technology Integration: Your KYC process can actually serve multiple business roles if properly integrated with your other tools. It’s a good idea to map out where else this data could be useful in other to get a better ROI from your client data.

Mako Fintech allows you to customize and automate every step of your KYC process and AML verifications. AML lookups can be built directly into your account opening and combined with remote electronic identity verification.

The collected data is then stored and harmonized to automatically pre-fill future KYC forms and other documents. Mako’s platform also allows you to track, review and approve forms for ID/AML lookup results in your Mako dashboard and onboard clients in a completely remote fashion.

Conclusion

AML is an essential process that must be backed by a comprehensive KYC solution. Combatting money laundering is a duty shared by the financial industry as a whole, and it must be taken seriously.

However, a good KYC process can provide other business benefits that should not be overlooked. When paired with good data management and analysis, your KYC can serve you in more ways than simple compliance.

If you’d like to explore what an automated, digital KYC process can do for your business, contact us here for a demo.

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Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

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So in my view an appropriately diversified portfolio should have enough exposure to different asset classes, that its able to withstand a wide range of market disruptions. Usually, it’s some kind of negative or positive event… they’ll affect different asset classes differently. So by having your eggs in different baskets you’ll be well insulated from major risk. For example, there’s some kind of change in the housing market… both by having some exposure to it, you won’t miss out on the opportunity to make money. But if it’s something negative, you’re also not going to lose all your money if all of it were in the housing market for example. So at a high level, a properly diversified portfolio should grow in a growing market and yet not be at risk of major losses in a declining market.
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You asked also about an efficiently diversified portfolio, and I would say that that’s a portfolio that achieves those goals with a minimum of different positions. There’s a lot of good reasons to have fewer positions in your portfolio. Being less complex means a portfolio is easier to rebalance and administer. Every time part of your portfolio goes up or down, you're going to need to rebalance it a little to make sure that it stays with the right allocations and the fewer positions you have, the easier it is to do that..the less trading fees you incur doing that.
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There is a tradeoff between being completely diversified and being efficiently diversified. If you were completely diversified then you’d have a proportional segment of absolutely everything you could invest in under the sun, like shares of palm oil futures or something like that. I don’t think everyone should have palm oil futures in their portfolio but I’m not a wealth manager. I think it comes down to your portfolio and how large it is (probably the Canada Pension Plan has a proportion of palm oil futures in it). You’re going to have to talk to your advisor and choose a degree of complexity that’s right for your portfolio.
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CN: Let’s just take a step back - what does a typical portfolio look like and has that changed over time?
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RB: Yeah, so I'm not entirely sure what a typical portfolio looks like these days because it's actually changed quite a lot over time. I think common wisdom used to be that the classic balanced portfolio was 60% public stocks and 40% bonds. These days that's ancient history. Most would say that the bond allocation should be a lot lower these days in this age of unprecedented low-interest rates. These days it’s the stock portfolio that’s been driving a lot of the growth. I think a well-diversified portfolio in the modern era should absolutely include exposure to all kinds of alternative assets (that aren't even really that alternative but still kind of fall out of that traditional bucket). So you know I mentioned real estate, private companies, maybe for example commodities or other types of investments. So I think that there are a lot of things that you can invest in and your advisor can guide you on what’s appropriate for you.
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CN: Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Talking about alternative investments, we’ve heard a lot this year about ESGs, impact investing, alternative investments… do you think there’s more of an appetite today for these types of investments than in the last ten years?
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RB: Yeah that’s a topic that’s close to my heart having previously started an impact investment company. It’s definitely been a gigantic increase in interest. I think when I started my previous company we were speaking to large wealth managers and having them say “we’re barely getting a grip on early ideas.” Like not including gun manufacturers or tobacco companies, and now these same companies are launching impact portfolios and marketing this aggressively. So there’s definitely been a seat change, it’s a real industry, and there’s a lot of studies out there and data showing that ESG or impact investing can equal or outperform non-impact investments. So I think it’s a huge part of the market these days. That said, one of the things that’s driving it is people’s interest in it. I think that one of the stories of the investment industry has been the personalization of it. People’s portfolios are being tailored to their own needs and circumstances. Impact investing is definitely a piece of that. People are environmentalists, but an institution is not an environmentalist. It doesn’t live and breathe the impact on the environment the way an individual does. The person who is active in the David Suzuki Foundation for example is going to be active as an impact investor and it’s appropriate for them to be.

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That’s a great question. I think there's a lot of advantages and you gain a lot with an automated platform. For me, it's a lot easier to manage. I have some of my money in one of these platforms and I barely think about it. It's being rebalanced all the time. The costs are much lower in terms of expense ratio for the same kind of rebalancing. Again you're missing a lot with that, but on just the mechanical portfolio rebalancing you're getting a great deal there. I would say that two other advantages are up-to-the-minute reporting, so you always have that login where you can see your position, see how your portfolio is doing historically. And finally, this is an advantage for me and anyone who doesn't love doing taxes, but typically they’ll take care of your tax forms for you, and end up with much simpler tax forms, so it kind of works out what your cost basis was and how much you have to report.
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CN: So let's talk about the other side of the coin then...what are the risks of not having a seasoned professional managing your money?
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RB: I wouldn’t exactly phrase the question that way. You know it's more what’s the benefits of having a real wealth manager? Some of the clients of robo advisory firms may not even be aware that they're missing out. A wealth manager isn't just balancing your stocks and bonds, that's kind of the very lowest mechanical level of what you get out of the wealth manager. Really they're your advisor on your life. Intimately intertwined with you because you're thinking about retirement planning, on planning for college for your kids, when is the right time to buy a house, and when should you get life insurance, for example. An advisor can help you with all of those decisions and they can connect you with service providers like a mortgage broker when you may be in need of one. So I think that you get a lot of value out of having one of these advisers, particularly when you get to a stage in life when these kinds of services are more about the long-term and your life circumstances are far more critical.
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CN: There are clearly pros and cons and two sides of the story depending on who you're asking. Like you said, what stage of their life they’re in ...but do you think the platforms that we’re seeing emerging like to Qtrade, Wealthsimple, and all the rest will ever become status quo?
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RB: Yeah, I do actually. I think that similarly to how you know we’re using online platforms to automate everything for us (I can’t think of the last time I used to travel for example), everything you’re going to be trying to do with your money is going to be automated, and it’s going to be appropriate to be handled by one of these one of these platforms. In particular, for most people at an early stage in their lives that have few assets to manage, not a lot of complexity, not a very extended personal family circumstance, it’s gonna make a lot of sense to have a low fee robo worry about it. But at some point their life circumstances are going to get more complex and you’re gonna get married, or maybe you’re not, or you may have other objectives that you may want some advice on and at that point it may make sense to either supplement the robo advisory portion of your portfolio, or graduate to a more holistic wealth management view.
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CN: Thank you so much Raph, these answers were great. It’s always insightful chatting with you so thanks for sharing those answers with us today.
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RB: It’s my pleasure.

Mako Fintech Team

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