IHS Markit launches platform for client onboarding

IHS Markit has launched Investor Onboarding to help firms automate, integrate and centralize onboarding and ongoing compliance obligations.

The fully hosted, digital onboarding platform simplifies and accelerates the onboarding experience for investors.

Christina McNamara, platforms and regulatory compliance director and global commercial due diligence lead, IHS Markit, said: “As investor onboarding becomes more complex and onerous, the need for increased efficiency has become urgent. Firms that rely on manual processes can take months to collect and validate the data required for subscription and tax documentation and conduct due diligence around AML / KYC, U.S. tax, FATCA and CRS. This not only poses a serious inconvenience to the firm’s investors but also inflates processing costs.

“At the same time, onboarding has been stressed as an important part of the investor experience. In an increasingly competitive investing landscape, many investment managers and fund admins are focusing on onboarding as a crucial investor touchpoint and seeking to differentiate the experience by digitizing and streamlining the process.”

Investor Onboarding is fully integrated with the Tax Solutions and KYC tools from IHS Markit, which are much valued within the trading industry. Coinbase has recently deployed the firm’s tax reporting tools to help users at the cryptocurrency exchange.

The solution offers:
• Enhanced investor experience by enabling users input data once, creating a golden source that populates multiple forms, including subscription agreements and tax forms. Data can also be pre-populated for existing investors, enabling subscribing to additional funds to be a review and submit function.
• Digitized investor data collection, validation and electronic signatures, creating a wholistic and validated Investor Profile.
• A configurable workflow to align with a firm’s back-office operations, fund documentation requirements and investor preferences.
• APIs enabling sharing of investor data with any CRM, due diligence and compliance monitoring software and approved third parties.
• Collection and storage of investor data in accordance with security requirements and the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA).
• Automated collection and validation of U.S. 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.

In 2018, IHS Markit launched Onboarding Accelerator, an automated, end-to-end onboarding solution for brokers, custodians and corporates, supporting 12,000+ buy sides, 200,00+ entities, and 200+ sell sides.

Onboarding Accelerator integrates entity data, document collection, KYC and tax profile validation, regulatory protocols and self-declarations, legal and credit agreements and operational setup.