Ezbob Adds KYC Automation To Lending-as-a-Service Offering

Lending-as-a-service company ezbob is rolling out a new solution designed to enable banks to more easily onboard clients and manage their Know Your Customer (KYC) due diligence.

A press release issued on Monday (Aug. 12) said ezbob’s lending platform now includes a module that allows financial institutions to automate the customer onboarding process. The platform connects banks to the company’s Smart Onboarding Engine to streamline KYC, anti-money laundering (AML) and other compliance checks when onboarding new clients.

The solution also includes a range of APIs that connect to third-party data sources. Those APIs allow for the automatic aggregation and analysis of corporate bank accounts, online accounting platforms, payment service providers and eCommerce portals, among other sources of data.

The new onboarding features expand ezbob’s offering, which until now has targeted straight-through-processing (STP) small business lending processes for banks. The company did not clarify in its press release whether the new compliance checks and onboarding service are geared toward enabling banks to address the needs of their larger corporate customers.

“When it comes to KYC, banks have made large investments, growing their compliance teams in order to deal with the new stringent regulatory requirements,” said ezbob CEO Tomer Guriel in a statement. “Clearing a customer now requires more back and forth with the client, and at the end of the day, it is the customer journey that suffers.

“With ezbob’s solution, once the customer clicks submit, that’s where our system instantly starts making API calls to databases, such as LexisNexis, in order to verify the customer,” Guriel continued. “By cross-checking multiple data sources through our own KYC risk engine, we’re able to deliver a true ‘pass/fail’ along with whatever additional information may be required.”

Last year, ezbob announced a partnership with American Express in which Amex refers its U.K. small business customers to ezbob’s financing services.