Appian’s low code expertise can help optimise KYC and AML compliance

B

anks big and small, incumbent and digital challengers, have been hitting the headlines for tax evasion and money laundering in recent years, leading to significant fines. Regulators have responded, imposing stricter requirements on how banks maintain their customers and internally audit to calculate risk.

Current KYC and AML requirements are time-consuming, complex and expensive and the regulatory challenges show no signs of easing. But according to Herbert Schild, Financial Services Industry Lead in Europe at Appian, machine learning AI can help banks build workflows rapidly, with low-code automation combining people, technologies, and data in a single workflow.

Already, five of the world’s 10 largest banks use Appian applications to improve customer experience, achieve operational excellence, and simplify global risk management and compliance.

The Covid crisis has, says Schild, placed a greater burden on banks to account for the identity of their customers. Given the global nature of the larger, banks they operate across international borders and that in itself, adds another layer of complexity.

“Globally, there is no global framework on how to perform risk analysis of customers. There remains a lot of manual work and coordinating different workflows is a real challenge time and a huge cost.”

He says that all banks want to speed up their existing processes but they still have to deal with a myriad of documents.

But while they want to reduce their costs, they have demands from customers to provide a better digital experience.

Eliminating manual processes is a good start but banks need to do far more than that. They must quickly change the way they do work in response to changing market, business and regulatory needs in ways that were not possible previously.

Appian is in a good place as more and more banks turn to low-code software to accelerate their delivery of emerging technologies like AI.

Low-code development will continue stripping the complexity out of deploying AI, making its business value more easily available. And so smaller banks with modest tech budgets will be able to deploy AI for more sophisticated fraud detection by flagging nuances in patterns of behaviour.

For example, Appian is helping banks to manage AML investigations and triage processes faster and more completely and is delivering consistent AML case management, regardless of trigger events (system or human).

Adds Schild: “Through low code automation, you are able to provide speed and rapid develop of applications and that speed to market is extremely important as banks look to differentiate themselves.”

He stresses that low-code provides the necessary speed to deliver new functions and capabilities as new regulations emerge or existing regulations evolve. And at the same time, low-code permits data integration across existing systems.

Appian unveiled the latest version of its Appian Low-code Automation Platform in May. The new release expands the boundaries of the low-code industry with the introduction of low-code data, a new code-free approach to unifying enterprise data.

The latest version of Appian also features enhanced AI-driven Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), new design guidance and developer collaboration features, and enhanced DevSecOps capabilities.

First quarter highlights include total revenue ahead by 13% y-o-y to $88.9m with cloud subscription revenue up by 38% y-o-y and subscriptions revenue up by 26% over Q1 2020.

Appian mobile usage surged by 19.7x over the past four quarters and it won 61% more new logos in Q1 2021 than in Q1 2020. On gross margins, subscriptions margin was 91% in the first quarter with a professional services margin of 32% for an overall gross margin of 75%.