SWIFT Announces Development Of New KYC Compliance Registry

Anti-Money Laundering Customer Due Diligence

On March 4, SWIFT, the bank member-owned cooperative based in Belgium, announced that it signed a Memorandum of Understanding with six of its major member banks to develop a central utility for the collection and distribution of standard information required by banks as part of their know your customer (KYC) due diligence processes. The KYC registry is intended to help banks manage KYC compliance challenges and reduce associated costs by providing bank users centralized access to details on their counterparties, while allowing participating banks to retain ownership of their own information and maintain control over which other institutions can view their data. SWIFT states that an initial working group will establish processes for providing information to the registry and documentation necessary to fulfill KYC requirements across multiple jurisdictions. The group expects more banks to join in the coming months.