What KYC information are required by banks?
Regardless of bank account opening or application for loans, banks always require businesses to provide four categories of information:
- Entity Details: including company name, registered address and registration number;
- Business Details: including the industry and nature of business in which the company is engaged;
- Shareholder / ownership structure: including shareholding proportion of various layers of shareholders and the comprehensive shareholding and ownership structure (including the ultimate owner);
- Key Personnel ID: identity verification of shareholders and ultimate owners.
The above information allows banks to identify and verify the identity of the business, and to assess the risk of their involvement in financial crimes, such as money laundering or financing of terrorism.
Why general company certification may not fully satisfy KYC requirements of banks?
Although there are a number of company certification or verification tools in the market, they only prove the existence of the businesses (such as the information from company search), which may not allow banks to fully understand and verify the ultimate owner(s) of the company. Therefore, even though SMEs and start-ups have paid application fees and annual fees to apply for the certifications that prove their existence, such proof may not sufficiently satisfy the KYC requirements for bank account opening.
How will SMEs benefit by building and managing their own KYC profile?
A business profile that satisfies the banks’ KYC requirements is similar to a Corporate ID, which facilitates the exploration of business opportunities for businesses, and spares time and efforts from cumbersome procedures such as submitting documents, explaining company business and the background of shareholders to the banks.
Over the past decades, banks or financial institutions’ have been taking the lead to request SMEs for KYC information, while the SMEs’ roles are relatively passive. From now on, SMEs can take a more leading role to build and manage their own KYC information.
Take RD ezLink as an example, SMEs can easily build a KYC profile of their companies for free via mobile app. RD ezLink will verify the information submitted by businesses in accordance with the prevailing regulatory banking standards. Businesses need not submit any documents in paper form in person.
Upon the completion of verification process, businesses may decide to submit the same KYC profile to the desired bank(s) or institutions(s) in one-go without repetitive procedures for different institutions every time.
In case of any changes in company or business information, by simply updating the relevant information via the mobile app, the information would be updated instantly in all related institutions. As such, SMEs are able to satisfy the requirements of both bank account opening and ongoing KYC requirements thereafter freely and easily.
Download RD ezLink and create your Corporate ID now:
Indeed, the RD ezLink Corporate ID is not only applicable to banks or financial institutions.
In the market, there are many institutions which would require SMEs to provide corporate information* (such as engagement of corporate secretary, accounting and legal counselling services; lease of coworking space; and opening e-commerce account). SMEs only need to provide their unique RD ezLink certification number for related institutions to verify the entity details at no cost. (Note: Currently, cost would be incurred while related institutions conduct company search and access to the relevant documents. Such costs may be transferred to SMEs at times.)
Download RD ezLink to create a Corporate ID for your business as soon as possible to open up more possibilities for your business!
* Different standards or requirements may apply to different institutions.
