The team at IHS Markit notes that Investor Onboarding digitizes and “streamlines collection and creation of subscription, AML, KYC and tax documents for end-to-end fund onboarding.”
IHS Markit has introduced Investor Onboarding, which is described as a fully hosted, digital onboarding platform enabling companies to automate, integrate and centralize onboarding and ongoing compliance obligations, while “simplifying and accelerating the onboarding experience for investors.”
Christina McNamara, Platforms & Regulatory Compliance Director and Global Commercial Due Diligence Lead, IHS Markit, stated:
“As investor onboarding becomes more complex and time-consuming, the need for greater efficiency has become urgent. Firms that rely on manual processes can take months to collect and validate the data required to collect subscription and tax documentation and conduct due diligence around AML/KYC, FATCA and CRS. This not only poses a serious inconvenience to the firm’s investors but also inflates processing costs.”
McNamara added:
“At the same time, onboarding has been increasingly recognized as an important part of the investor experience. In an increasingly competitive investing landscape, many investment managers are focusing on onboarding as a crucial first investor touchpoint and seeking to differentiate the experience by digitizing and streamlining the process.”
The solution provides:
Improved investor experience by allowing clients to input data once, “creating a golden source that populates multiple forms, including subscription agreements and tax forms.”
The announcement also mentioned that the data may be “pre-populated for existing investors, enabling subscribing to additional funds to be a review and submit function.”
Additionally, the the solution offers digitized investor data collection, validation and electronic signatures, “creating a wholistic and validated Investor Profile.” There’s also a configurable workflow to align with a company’s back-office operations, fund documentation requirements and investor preferences. In addition to these features, there are APIs “enabling sharing of investor data with any CRM, due diligence and compliance monitoring software and approved third parties.”
The solution also offers the following:
- Collection and storage of investor data “in accordance with security requirements and the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA)”
- Automated collection and validation of US IRS tax forms,
- Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) and Common Reporting Standard (CRS) tax residency forms and KYC reviews for both entity and individual investor types.
- Investor Onboarding is the latest onboarding solution from IHS Markit, “fully integrated with their Tax Solutions and KYC businesses.”
In 2018, the firm introduced Onboarding Accelerator, which is described as an “automated, end-to-end onboarding solution for brokers, custodians and corporates.”
Built within the Counterparty Manager platform, it “integrates entity data, document collection, KYC and tax profile validation, regulatory protocols and self-declarations, legal and credit agreements and operational setup,” the announcement noted while adding that the platform “supports 12,000+ buy sides, 200,00+ entities, and 200+ sell sides.”
For more details on this update, check here.