Deloitte develops DLT project to help banks know their customers
Deloitte Luxembourg has developed a proof of concept it calls KYCstart, which uses distributed ledger technology for know your customer (KYC) procedures. It anticipates that the service will be taken up by banks, insurance companies, funds and asset servicers. Customers will have direct control of who they share personal information with and can keep track of their authorisations on the distributed ledger using smart contracts. The technology is aimed at reducing the costs of KYC procedures.

Source: Deloitte

Deloitte Luxembourg has developed KYCstart (pronounced “Kick Start”), a new proof-of-concept to perform customer on-boarding using Distributed Ledger Technology.

The model introduces extensible Digital Identities and the forward-looking concept of regulated KYC Added-Value Service Providers, with the objective to onboard customers once to be used across several different platforms and organizations.



In this model, KYC Added-Value Services Providers are regulated entities that are authorized to perform Know-Your-Customer (KYC) procedures for communities of users who want to enter in business relationships with various businesses such as banks, insurance companies, funds, asset servicers, and administrations.



Customers directly control to whom they share their personal information and documents, keeping track of these authorizations in the distributed ledger using smart contracts.



Deloitte Luxembourg has extended the core KYC platform developed by Deloitte’s EMEA Blockchain Lab to demonstrate a comprehensive ecosystem for fund investors based on a DLT platform, which puts new regulated entities in the picture. This PoC demonstrates the power of the Deloitte Labs to build technological and functional bricks that can be reused by other member firms globally to showcase disruptive business and operating models.



The way it works

Thibault Chollet, Blockchain Leader at Deloitte Luxembourg explains: “With this proof of concept and related eco-system, we demonstrate the benefits of using Blockchain and smart contract to considerably reduce the costs of one of the most important burden of our institutional clients: KYC and customer on-boarding.”



While these procedures can already been externalized, they still must be performed each time a customer is willing to enter in a new business relationship with an institution. At the level of a market or an industry, it means that the same checks are repeated several times for the same customer. The responsibility of performing those checks still currently remain at the level of the institution that is required by law to oversee.



“Providers can now rely on specialized entities to delegate and mutualize the KYC and AML/CTF procedures, reducing the cost of both onboarding and ongoing monitoring,” continues Maxime Heckel, Director at Deloitte Luxembourg specializing in KYC services.



He adds that Deloitte will start providing “KYC as-a-Service” to financial institutions as of mid-2017. KYCstart will be one of the proposed counterparty on-boarding channels for the service.



Deloitte Luxembourg will present this proof-of-concept at ICT Spring on 9-10 May.