LONDON/NEW YORK/HONG KONG – The need to identify, verify and screen ultimate beneficial owners and controllers of corporate entities and funds is driving increasing numbers of financial firms to adopt Thomson Reuters Org ID to meet their customer due diligence obligations.

The award-winning Org ID KYC (Know Your Customer) managed service and customer onboarding solution reaches a series of significant milestones this month, driven by the growing need for financial firms to meet the demands of regulators, governments and society about their customers and their links to other concerns.

As well as more than 25,000 KYC entity profile reports published to customers, an additional 100,000 profiles have been added from Lipper, the pre-eminent provider of independent research, global collective investment content and evaluation tools for investment products. All profiles and related parties are fully verified and screened, with continuous monitoring and dynamic refresh available to customers as part of the end-to-end Org ID solution.

Recent agreements signed with leading financial institutions, including Commerzbank Corporates & Markets, Nomura, SberBank CIB, USA Inc, Sberbank CIB (UK) Limited and Amundi will increase significantly the number of profiles on Org ID. These world-class institutions join Org ID’s growing portfolio of financial and corporate clients, including BlackRock, Tradeweb, Man Group, BGC Partners, Stifel Nicolaus, IBM, Lenovo, Rentokil, Deloitte and Vodafone – all of whom have selected Org ID as a leading solution for strategic client due diligence, benefiting from the powerful breadth and depth of data offered by Thomson Reuters. A further eight investment banks from five continents are piloting the Org ID managed service.

“We have chosen to work with Thomson Reuters Org ID, in order to leverage their end-to-end Managed Service capability,” said Markus Plümer, Head of Securities Finance and Equity Collateral Solutions, Commerzbank Corporates & Markets. “Org ID Operations will build KYC records, for a selected client group, to the Commerzbank standard and deliver them back via an API in accordance to our strict Service Level Agreement. In the background the service will continuously monitor and screen for underlying identity changes in the records.  We anticipate process improvements as a result of adopting this service.”

“We are proud to have established and now announce KYC partnerships with our new clients, demonstrating rapid progress over the last year assembling a platform of leading buy-side and sell-side firms,” said Steve Pulley, global managing director – Risk Managed Services at Thomson Reuters. “In many cases we are finding we have 50 percent or greater overlap with the top 200 clients of our customers.”

Integrated into Org ID entity profile reports is the trusted digital identifier – Thomson Reuters Permanent Identifier (Perm ID) – enabling financial institutions to further uncover the complex, dynamic relationships between individuals, entities and their holdings. PermID is akin to a barcode for information, providing comprehensive identification across diverse entity types, encompassing organizations, instruments, funds, issuers, and people. Through the establishment of this trusted unique identity, Thomson Reuters facilitates greater transparency for firms to gain customer insights and mitigate their risk exposure.

From compliance operations centres in the UK, Poland, South Africa and Malaysia, Org ID has published KYC profiles on entities incorporated in over 148 countries with English translation extracts from over 60 languages. To accommodate the KYC requirements of financial institutions globally, Org ID maintains a standardised policy written to ensure compliance with local legislation and regulation in major capital markets centres including: France, Germany, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Australia, South Africa and Canada, in addition to the UK and USA.   

The financial services industry has bestowed accolades upon Thomson Reuters Org ID; it recently received the Data Management Review Award 2015 for “Best KYC & Client On-Boarding Solution” – the second straight year Org ID has earned this recognition. In October, Org ID also won the “Best Managed/Support Service Provider of the Year” at the Operational Risk & Regulation Awards 2015 ceremony in New York.  Earlier last year, peers voting for the 2015 FTF News Technology Innovation Awards selected Org ID to receive two FTF Excellence Awards -- in the categories of ‘Best Operational Risk Management Solution’ and ‘Best AML/Anti-Fraud Solution’.

Thomson Reuters

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