Bitesize InsurTech: ComplyAdvantage

September 8, 2016 Chris Sandilands

This week, something completely different: RegTech.

When was the last time your company thought about the way it does sanctions checking?  According to Stephen Ball, VP Sales and Marketing of ComplyAdvantage, it was probably quite some time ago. Whether you’re a big or small institution, you are likely to have a process that involves quite a lot of manual work, such as resolving potential hits. And if you screen for ‘PEPs’ (politically exposed persons) this is likely to be even more painful…

ComplyAdvantage is a London-based startup that is trying to make this tedious but important process both more robust and less onerous. Their core product is a dynamic database of people, companies and their connections, that pose a financial crime risk (including sanctions) that can be used for anti-money laundering (AML), fraud prevention, etc. Their “value add” has two elements:

• Improving hit rates by sourcing better data and identifying networks around named individuals (“if you’re on the sanctions list, you’d probably ask your mate to apply for a policy”);
• Reducing false positives by cleaning “hits” with whizzy data techniques such as machine learning (helpful if you’re called Charles Taylor but you’re not the warlord version, for example).

We understand from Stephen that one large financial services company managed to reduce its false positive count by over 60% by implementing its system, which clearly leads to significant customer experience and operational efficiencies.

ComplyAdvantage ain’t sexy – but it is a great example how insurers and brokers can improve their processes and efficiency through the selective deployment of niche technology.