Leading Nordic banks DNB Bank, Danske Bank, Nordea Bank, Svenska Handelsbanken, and Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken have announced plans to set up a KYC utility as a joint venture company to explore the creation of a shared infrastructure for know-your-customer processing.
In recent years, compliance with requirements for processing customer data has become a critical component in fighting financial crime and a growing regulatory overhead for the banking community. Bank customers are, however, struggling with time-consuming KYC information requirements, often including many banks and formats.
The joint venture, Nordic KYC Utility, will be owned and controlled by the founding banks, with a focus on developing an "efficient, common, secure and cost-effective infrastructure" platform for sharing confidential customer credentials.
Initially servicing service large and midsize Nordic corporates, the company will also offer its services to third parties.
The establishment and operational start of the joint venture company is conditional upon approval of the European Commission under the EU Merger Regulation and the company is expected to be established during the second half of 2018.