CRIF & Know Your Customer join PAOB to enhance digital experience for SMEs

By Gloria Mathias

CRIF & Know Your Customer have announced a partnership with Ping An OneConnect Bank (PAOB) to enhance the digital onboarding process for SME clients.

The partnership aims to set the foundations to support PAOB to meet the increasing demand for quick-to-access banking services by local SMEs through the provision of a highly scalable and cloud-native solution.

The new system, developed by CRIF and Know Your Customer, leverages real-time registry connections to automatically retrieve documents and map shareholders. This provides a centralised solution that integrates data from multiple official sources into one place.

This collaboration supports PAOB to streamline the SME onboarding process and facilitate the customer with due diligence whilst reducing costs and manual work.

Jamie Anderson, Global Head of Sales at Know Your Customer said, “We are delighted to be working with our partner CRIF to support PAOB’s vision of outstanding SME onboarding and next-generation digital compliance and we look forward to supporting their growth in Hong Kong and across the APAC region.”

Ivan Chow, Head of Strategy & Partnerships of PAOB shared, “Since our successful launch in 2020, we have been thriving our virtual banking services for local SMEs and we significantly expedited the bank account opening and loan approval processes. Given Hong Kong is now opening up, we believe the SMEs would be benefited from the economic rebound and recovery, and the demand for operating capital financing is likely increased. The partnership with CRIF and Know Your Customer will further enhance our customer-centric experience to the SME customers.”

CRIF offers an extensive portfolio of business data and intelligence, including credit data; open banking; and Environmental, Social, and Governance data. Meanwhile, Know Your Customer provides coverage of real-time registry connections, Ultimate Beneficial Owner mapping across borders, and modular workflow capabilities.

CRIF & Know Your Customer’s joint offering provides digital banks and financial institutions with a one-stop solution that addresses their client onboarding and ongoing monitoring requirements.