Case study

Improving KYC efficiency while maintaining regulatory confidence

Co-Founder and PartnerMatthew Neill

A regional private bank with a UK presence serving high net worth individuals and corporates had recently emerged from a period of regulatory remediation with confidence in its compliance position. In doing so, however, leadership recognised that the resulting KYC control environment had become overly complex and increasingly resource intensive.

Within a UK operation of over 100 staff, up to 10% of headcount was absorbed by KYC and CDD activity. Client onboarding and periodic reviews relied on fragmented handoffs across shared drives and email, alongside repeated manual data entry into core banking systems. Every new account was subject to full first-line Quality Assurance regardless of risk, and analysts routinely duplicated checks already performed elsewhere in the process. KYC resourcing was also organised along business-line silos, limiting flexibility and making it difficult to manage peaks and troughs in demand.

The bank asked BeyondFS to provide a clear and defensible basis for determining which elements of the KYC control environment could be simplified to release capacity and improve the client experience, without reopening regulatory risk for an institution serving an inherently higher-risk, international client base.

Industry segment
Regional Bank
Function
CLM / Onboarding & KYC
Core capabilities
KYC/CLM Optimisation, Operating Model Review

Key outcomes delivered

A clear assessment of onboarding and periodic review activity, identifying where manual effort and duplication could be reduced safely.
A prioritised KYC efficiency plan, identifying 18 improvement opportunities, with 6 initiatives developed in sufficient detail to support decision-making and implementation planning.
An independent benchmarking perspective on how the bank’s KYC approach compared with UK and international industry practice.

Approach

Establishing a clear view of the current operating model

The end-to-end KYC operating model was reviewed across policies, processes and controls, with on-site engagement alongside analysts and compliance teams to observe how work was performed in practice. This provided a grounded view of where effort was genuinely risk-driven and where it had accumulated through duplicated checks, manual handoffs and over-engineered controls.

Identifying sources of friction and inefficiency

Operational bottlenecks and pain points were diagnosed across onboarding and periodic review activity. This included a heavy reliance on Quality Assurance that slowed turnaround times, alongside a customer risk calculator tool that was difficult to maintain and no longer aligned to the way the business operated.

Applying market perspective and prioritising change

Findings were benchmarked against UK and international best practice to distinguish necessary controls from areas where peer institutions had adopted more proportionate, risk-based approaches. Improvement opportunities were prioritised based on business impact and implementation complexity, allowing leadership to focus on a small number of changes that would deliver meaningful efficiency gains without increasing risk.

Assessing options for a more flexible operating model

As part of the review, BeyondFS explored options to centralise KYC resources across business lines, improving flexibility and creating a more resilient model for managing peaks and troughs in demand.

Outcome

Providing a clear, defensible basis for simplifying KYC

By the end of the engagement, the bank had a clear and actionable position on how to shift KYC from a source of friction to a more proportionate and efficient control function, while keeping compliance firmly at the core of the operating model.

The review produced a structured set of 18 efficiency opportunities, with the six highest-priority initiatives set out in detail, including the operational approach, required investment and expected outcomes. This gave leadership a practical basis for progressing change and engaging stakeholders with confidence.

BeyondFS also set out how the priority improvements could be aligned with a Client Lifecycle Management platform implementation already underway, ensuring that operational changes, including updates to the risk model and a more targeted QA approach, were reflected in future system enhancements.

As a result, the bank was positioned to deliver sustainable KYC efficiency improvements that also supported a better client experience, without compromising regulatory confidence.