About SupplierPlus
- SupplierPlus is a buyer-led Supply Chain Finance (SCF) platform.
- The company helps trade partners to release working capital in supplier-buyer relations.
SupplierPlus allows buyers and suppliers to operate at payment terms that fit their cash flow needs.
The company simplifies invoice financing between buyers, suppliers, and financiers. Both banks and non-bank financiers provide financing.
SupplierPlus excels in cross-border transactions, which is also where compliance with Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements become tricky.
The Challenges
SupplierPlus operates in an industry that requires a significant level of automation. The company’s strategy was to prioritize technology as a means of building trust with its customers and adding more value to its service offerings.
To achieve this goal, SupplierPlus searched for a way to replace manual compliance workflow with automation.
According to the SCF platform, automated compliance tools became essential not only for providing customers with an excellent user experience but also for increasing profitability in its competitive market.
At the same time, SupplierPlus wanted a robust solution to simplify the CDD process. iDenfy was able to provide an AI-powered product to meet that need, ensuring compliance with AML requirements in a fast and cost-effective manner.
As the company ventured into new markets, its rapid growth resulted in several new challenges:
- Issues with AML risk assessment. Customer risk levels were difficult to assess due to partial monitoring coverage, especially for cross-border clients.
- Lack of automation in AML controls. Risk mitigation efforts were bounded due to manual operations, dependence on limited data sources, and the need to collect data across multiple sources, which resulted in a lengthy, complex process.
- Growing risk of fraud. The company’s client base continued growing, as did the potential financial crime risks. That required additional preventative and detective fraud prevention controls.
This process was time-consuming, and SupplierPlus’ team had to repeat it every time a new client or vendor was onboarded.
“A successful compliance program requires real-time detection of potential risks when screening and monitoring customers. To improve our AML procedures, we began searching for a new solution,” said Indrek Vilms, Chief Compliance Officer at SupplierPlus.
“We aimed to increase our credibility and reliability for our financiers, and we believed that automation was the key to achieving this.”
The Solution
SupplierPlus needed an AML service that could accelerate the pace of identifying and verifying large amounts of data without interfering with the response times for existing customers or potential new users.
When SupplierPlus was searching for a new service provider to strengthen its AML capacities, they considered crucial factors such as flexibility in configuration and integration as well as the ability to offer multiple AML compliance tools:
- SupplierPlus believed it was crucial to partner with a company that understood its regulatory obligations and could apply them effectively to the company’s distinctive business model.
- When selecting a long-term compliance service provider, the competitive price offered by iDenfy for automating AML screening and monitoring checks played a significant role.
Since iDenfy met all of its requirements, SupplierPlus decided to adopt its AML screening, ongoing monitoring, and adverse media screening solutions.
iDenfy’s automated adverse media solution offered the ability to screen thousands of news outlets and unstructured media sources. The advanced volume data processing options allowed SupplierPlus to import and update data automatically daily, minimizing the workload for its internal compliance team.
Implementing iDenfy’s AML solution offered daily real-time customer screening and enabled automated checks against the most up-to-date lists, including multiple global watchlists, sanctions, and Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs).
The Results
The need to review multiple systems to gather needed information or wait for responses from external teams or contractors was no longer an issue. iDenfy’s integration allowed SupplierPlus access to a single, automated source of information, helping streamline all AML processes.
The switch to iDenfy’s AML service package resulted in a fully automated AML compliance program for SupplierPlus.
“While we used to check only higher-risk clients at a greater frequency, now we cover our entire client base at a greater frequency,” — noted Indrek Vilms.
iDenfy’s API was quickly integrated into SupplierPlus’ existing system so the team could access the information through a user-friendly interface.
This, in turn, increased credibility and reliability for its financiers, who trust SupplierPlus to take the necessary measures to ensure compliance and mitigate risks:
- iDenfy’s AML service enabled SupplierPlus to screen a larger volume of customers than they had been able to in the past.
- This change enabled SupplierPlus’ internal compliance team to switch to a fully automated workflow, which made it faster for them to detect flags and check whether any account registering on the platform was sanctioned or high-risk.
Due to the improvements made, SupplierPlus can focus on growing its business with confidence, knowing that its compliance and risk management strategies meet expected standards.
“By implementing iDenfy’s automated adverse media screening and AML monitoring, we can offer faster service to our clients without incurring high costs. As a company focused on international markets, we recognize the value of iDenfy’s technology, which allows us to monitor cross-border clients more efficiently.”
Indrek Vilms, Chief Compliance Officer at SupplierPlus
