3 types of due diligence (KYD, KYAM, KYI).

“At Avanza we always strive to be early adopters of innovative solutions and to lead digital transformation of the fund industry. By joining GRC WATCH we see huge efficiency gains and this is exactly the kind of development we want to be part of. The sooner everyone is part of the same network, the sooner we will solve the inefficiencies related to due diligence”, Linnea Wiklund, Head of Fund Selection, Avanza Bank.

Before GRC WATCH: Avanza Bank was founded in 1999 and is one of the leading digital banks in Sweden. Avanza offers more than 1300 funds to 900 000 clients. 130 fund managers have to perform due diligence on Avanza each year and Avanza also has to perform due diligence on all of these fund managers. If all of them were sending a unique DDQ via email, this means that 260 DDQs would fly back and forth – each year. 260 processes to collect DDQs. We estimate that at least 40% of the requests require some kind of reminder. This means (260×2) + 104 = 625 emails! Just for the annual due diligence between fund managers and Avanza (KYD and KYAM).

With GRC WATCH: Avanza Bank has a distributor profile in GRC WATCH. They share it with all of the fund managers who perform “Know Your Distributor” due diligence on Avanza (KYD). The fund managers have an asset manager profile in GRC WATCH. Avanza access the profiles when they perform due diligence on the asset managers. Before they sign agreements (initial due diligence) and on a regular basis (on-going due diligence). Avanza also share certain types of documents in their profile with transfer agents and fund administrators. For instance signatory lists and AML related documents (“Know Your Investor” due diligence, KYI).

A final comment by Avanza:

“The most brilliant part of GRC WATCH is that it helps us work smarter and avoid a lot of questionnaires and documents via email. Now we can easily monitor the management companies that we select to our fund platform (KYAM due diligence). They can also check us in the same environment by getting access to our distributor profile (KYD due diligence).

It’s also great that we can share our profile with other types of companies like transfer agents and fund administrators (KYI due diligence). They ask documents when they do KYC on our bank when we invest as a nominee on behalf of our customers. All of these documents are already included in our distributor profile and it saves a lot of time for our back-office.”

Linnea Wiklund, Head of Fund Selection, Avanza Bank

More info about Avanza Bank: www.avanza.se

More info about Linnea: Linkedin