Following a successful pilot process that delivered extremely positive results, Metro Bank has become the first major financial institution in the UK to announce they will be adopting the Artesian Risk and Compliance Hub (ARCH). The service will bring dynamic data driven automation of risk and KYC to the frontline of the business and commercial banking function, revolutionising the acquisition and onboarding process for new customers.

ARCH is a SaaS solution enabling Relationship Managers to carry out smart, bank compliant pre-screening on prospective clients to quickly validate against the bank’s risk appetite, while helping to identify any complexities that may be raised during onboarding much earlier in the process, enabling faster resolution and better customer expectation setting. ARCH can be configured to use the customers preferred credit risk and KYC data partners which are used to provide screening checks during onboarding. ARCH also has a fully configurable decision-engine which automatically applies the bank’s own unique policies to that data to present a summarised view of risk, flagging any potential issues. ARCH then automates the distribution of simple KYC tasks to Relationship Managers and others within the bank, leaving its KYC and compliance specialists free to deal with the more complex tasks that require their knowledge and experience.

ARCH offers Metro Bank an improved risk and compliance solution to the current back-office approach which is common place in the majority of business and commercial banking operations in the UK. It fosters a ‘distributed compliance’ approach which maintains the power to control and comply with KYC requirements while putting ‘knowing your customer’ back where it belongs, in the hands of Metro Bank’s Relationship Managers. This will ultimately deliver advanced onboarding and improved customer experiences.

Matt Elsom, Vice President of Risk Solutions at Artesian commented on the relationship with Metro Bank: “We’re delighted to announce our partnership with Metro Bank, a great first client for ARCH. Metro Bank has a true desire to disrupt the status quo and a strong appetite to adopt technology innovations that improve customer experiences, whilst at the same time protecting themselves and their customers as they continue on an aggressive growth trajectory and attract even more FANS.”

Mark Stokes, Managing Director Commercial Banking at Metro Bank commented: “Metro Bank is the revolution in the commercial and corporate banking space, providing unrivalled customer experience in terms of speed of decision making and action - something we pride ourselves upon. We are excited to work with Artesian to take such a revolutionary tech-driven approach to bringing compliance and KYC into the forefront of our business and commercial banking activities. Artesian will help us know more, know sooner and save valuable time we can invest in building great customer relationships.”