Know Your Customer and CRIF announce strategic investment and global commercial partnership for premium corporate KYC

A global company based in Bologna (Italy), CRIF specialises in credit bureau and business information, as well as advanced digital solutions for business development and open banking.

Know Your Customer is an award-winning RegTech company headquartered in Hong Kong with offices in Singapore, China, Ireland, and the UK. It provides digital solutions for corporate KYC and client onboarding automation to financial institutions worldwide.

The partnership will enable Know Your Customer to leverage CRIF’s long-established and extensive customer network across 40 countries and 10,500 financial institutions to accelerate growth in new and existing global markets. The capital injection will allow Know Your Customer to broaden its product scope to target previously untapped sectors and extend the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation components within its platform.

Under the agreement, CRIF will expand its existing KYC data offering to include Know Your Customer’s premium cloud-based platform to power end-to-end digitisation of corporate onboarding for the global financial sector.

The collaboration between the two firms aims at accelerating innovation processes for banks and FinTechs in need of extensive digital transformation in our new business environment. The partnership will also provide an enhanced customer experience to individuals and businesses worldwide by leveraging a more comprehensive and updated data set, ultimately making access to credit simpler.

The transaction follows significant business growth for Know Your Customer over the past 18 months. The company’s client base spans 11 sectors and 18 jurisdictions, including Tier 1 banks, leading corporate service providers, large credit card issuers, fast-growing FinTechs and Asian and European challenger banks.

Claus Christensen, CEO & Co-Founder of Know Your Customer, commented: “This new partnership and investment represent a tremendous achievement as well as an essential foundation for the next phase in Know Your Customer’s global expansion. The entire team at Know Your Customer is looking forward to collaborating closely with CRIF to expand the reach and further advance the capabilities of our cutting-edge corporate KYC solution”.

Carlo Gherardi, CRIF CEO, added: “Know Your Customer’s technology represents a strategically important addition to our product portfolio, strengthening our position as centre of excellence for corporate KYC solutions in Asia and at global level”.

Following the investment, Paola Galassi, Executive Director of B2B Services at CRIF, will join Know Your Customer’s board of directors.

Zelig acted as exclusive strategic and financial advisor to Know Your Customer on the investment by CRIF.

About Know Your Customer

Established in 2015, Know Your Customer provides next-generation digital onboarding solutions to organisations around the world. Our award-winning technology is setting a new standard in the space of Anti-Money Laundering, Corporate KYC and ID Verification. Know Your Customer empowers compliance teams to efficiently perform all necessary KYC and AML checks on customers, centralising the onboarding process through a uniquely intuitive and easy-to-use platform. This technology accelerates the time needed to onboard a new corporate client from an industry average of 26 days to 1 day, reducing compliance teams’ manual work by up to 85%.

With offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Dublin and London, Know Your Customer has quickly established a global presence and a reputation for excellence. Our customer list spans across 11 verticals – including banking, FinTech, insurance, payments, real estate, asset management, legal firms – and 18 jurisdictions.