Know Your Business – What Does it Mean & How can it Protect Your Company?

Businesses that offer their services to other businesses, instead of individual consumers, have to be more vigilant in their customer onboarding processes. According to a survey, B2B merchants say 19% of all online purchase inquiries are attempts at online fraud. So, it has become important, in the current regulatory landscape, to secure your own interest before engaging with another business. According to the Australia Competition and Consumer Commission’s Targeting Scams reports that $91.4 million was lost to B2B invoice fraud in Australia last year. 

For this, Know Your Business practices come in handy as they help a company to verify the corporate information of their potential clients and personal information of the higher management handling the operations of that client company. Business verification for KYC or Customer Due diligence is essential to identify the ultimate beneficial ownership (UBO) structure.

What does Know Your Business Mean?

A typical Know Your Business practice enables corporate organizations to determine whether they are dealing with authentic business entities or shell companies that are just present on the paper. AML Checks for business and proper document verification is demanded by regulators, especially in developed countries when dealing with foreign entities. Guidelines such as Electronic Identity Verification (eIDV) and 4th AML directive from the European Union are some of the examples that dictate Know Your Business (KYB) laws to corporate entities.

On the other side of the pond, in the US, Customer Due Diligence measures are being dictated to be the norm to determine the true ownership of a business entity. Several KYC service providers offer different business verification services in order to collect business verification data. Some Identity verification services such as Shufti can perform business verification in seconds with the help of its document verification services, identity verification of the top management through official identity documents and Anti Money Laundering Checks.

Similar to Know Your Customer (KYC), KYB service providers verify businesses by obtaining official commercial register data using APIs. By employing the registration number and jurisdiction code of a business, an efficient digital KYB service can collect confirmable information for the business.

From KYC to KYB

The Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), introduced in 1970, is the United States’ most important anti-money laundering regulation. Banks and other financial institutions must meet the compliance obligations it involves.  BSA gave birth to KYC and AML solutions to make sure that businesses verify the identities of their customers and have valid money laundering checks. From verifying customers, the need to verify businesses emerged. The fifth AMLD  has centralized the data of beneficiary owner data. This centralization brought ease to the table for KYC and KYB.  Businesses must know the other business they are dealing with. According to Repair Driver News, $6.7 million worth of business loans were allegedly obtained fraudulently by a California auto body shop owner. In another survey, Payment fraud represents 60% of B2B fraud losses in the last five years. The reason why it is very crucial in this era to know the company you are concluding business with is because if it is blacklisted, it can cause trouble for your business as well. So the company verification process is vital to know the business one is dealing with.  

How KYB protect Your Business Interests?

Based on Artificial Intelligence, Shufti can determine not only the true identity of a verifying individual but can also check for the financial risk attached to that person with AML Compliance solutions. With Anti Money Laundering services from Shufti, you can check the involvement or presence of any top official of your partnering company in any watchlist or financial risk database. Shufti banks on its huge databank to perform Customer Due Diligence on behalf of its customers. Shufti can perform AML Background checks in real-time from 1000+ Watchlists and 3000+ databases.

Know Your Customer services might be the main objective of any identity verification service such as Shufti, but the same set of services can be used to check the authenticity of any corporate entity. These KYB services are greatly helpful for financial institutions handling funds of large customer base and corporate entities. Banks, brokerage firms and dealers of several investment institutions have to be especially vigilant against every business entity that wants to partner with them.

Automated ID verification for identifying B2B frauds 

Performing Know Your Business procedures can be hectic and might require specialized manual resources, but automated business verification solutions can come in handy. Automating verification processes is a powerful step towards fighting B2B frauds. On one hand, conducting business online brings in a greater volume of online scams but on the other hand, automating business verification practices provides robust solutions that can prevent possible fraud attempts worth millions of dollars. They are not only the perfect form of Regtech but they enable businesses to be secure from multi-million dollar fines that a regulator will easily slap on such institutions if found in breach of their regulations.

Read: The Urgency for Know Your Customer’s Customer (KYCC) in Businesses

Business Verification Service – Is it Worth Your Time?

Most of the banks have already tasted the slow agonizing pain of KYC verification for their customer onboarding, transaction authentication, and remote banking services. This is the reason why most of the large financial institutions that are in dire need of Know Your Business services or who want to determine the ultimate beneficial ownership (UBO) structure of the corporations they are dealing with, find it hard to trust a KYC service provider. But with Shufti and its Artificial Intelligence (AI) based identity verification services, it becomes easier to perform business verifications in seconds. With Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Global Business Verification, Shufti becomes an ultimate resource for businesses for real-time identification and verification. Shufti is available in 230 countries of the world with support available for 150 official languages. It has the ability to determine the true identity of a person with the help of authentic identity documents that include ID Cards, passports, and driving licenses.

With machine learning algorithms any attempt of forging identity documents or even ownership structure can easily be detected by Shufti. Fake credentials or personal information provided about the top management, a common practice in the case of Shell companies with complex management structures, can also be easily traced by Shufti. Nationality verification and Geolocation services of Shufti enables companies to determine the true country of origin for international clients and whether a certain company has been incorporated at a certain tax haven or not.

So in order to collect reliable business verification data and perform impeccable business verification, try KYC and AML Compliance solutions from ShuftiPro. You can even sign up for 15 days of free trial at first in order to check the service standards by this global identity verification service

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