Ankit Ratan, Co-founder -; CEO, Signzy

11 Jan 2022 , 12:10 PM

In an interaction with Mamta Maity, indiainfoline.com, Mr. Ankit Ratan, Co-founder & CEO, Signzy said “our solution also uses Big Data Optimisation that ensures information can be looked up across large data sets within a few seconds.”

Tell us about how Signzy helped SBI reduce its account opening application processing time? What is the benefit here for the end customer of the bank?

Signzy has enabled the country’s largest lender by assets, to automate the high effort task of capturing Central KYC (CKYC) data and making it super-efficient. Signzy implements CKYC through the powerful mix of Artificial Intelligence, Cryptography and Big Data Optimisation to simplify the extremely tedious task of application processing. With a single scan, our AI Engine accurately undertakes visual recognition of the customer’s ID, checks and verifies biometrics, and automatically extracts data from the documents, with the end result being a single complaint CKYC form. This makes it very easy for SBI in this case or any of our partners, to process more applications in a few seconds. Apart from this, Signzy’s solution also provides for storing of sensitive data required for audit trails and secure sharing by Banks.

Our solution also uses Big Data Optimisation that ensures information can be looked up across large data sets within a few seconds. In addition to Banks benefiting from tremendously speeding up processes, the end customer also benefits from a very seamless and hassle free banking experience which is really important in this day and age of digital natives.

In comparison to other KYC processes for one customer, how does CKYC lead to safer operations for a bank?

In terms of functionality, KYC, eKYC, and CKYC are just the same. They just differ in their approach and how they implement security and accessibility of KYC records for the clients. The CKYC is the Government of India’s program seeking to create an integrated system that enables investors to do their KYC only once. CKYC enforcement allows an investor to go through the whole process without having to complete several KYC formalities. It improves the overall security, stability, accessibility, and processing of applicants and existing investors alike and reduces the chances of frauds.

What are the common challenges with CKYC and what steps are required to increase its implementation?

Lack of data standardisation, manual checks and fear of non-compliance are three of the biggest challenges to CKYC compliance today. Common procedures involve document segregation, tagging, standardization, and finally uploading the customer data. CKYC regulations on a large volume of customer data are stringent, and require that financial institutions standardize customer data. In terms of technology, many financial institutions face constraints in processing and uploading customer data. The second challenge is procedural. Since a lot of the compliance procedures are manual, many financial institutions face high turn-around-time (TATs), and productivity crunch. Since significant time is devoted only to the compliance related procedures, there is a big opportunity lost in focussing on new business.

Finally, there is a perennial fear among banks and financial institutions of not meeting regulatory compliance. Due to their susceptibility to errors, manual processes increase the risk of non-compliance, and it becomes a challenge to comply with, under tight regulatory deadlines.

With Signzy’s AI Engine, the entire process of uploading customer data in compliance with regulations, is automated. The turnaround time reduces significantly from many minutes to a few seconds. In the case of SBI, Signzy’s solution helped the bank process over 50,000 applications a day with 99% accuracy.

What kind of demand has Signzy witnessed from other banking clients for CKYC in 2021?

Signzy is working with leading banks and financial institutions, such as Axis Bank, HDFC, ICICI, Bank of Baroda, Mahindra Finance, and LIC Mutual Fund, among others to expedite application processing through CKYC and also completely automate back-operations and therefore decision-making process. Post Covid we have seen a big surge in such requirements from not just banks but also mutual funds companies. People are now hesitant to walk into branches for account opening.

What are the common challenges faced by banks in their digital transformation journey?

Customers are increasingly demanding better digital banking experiences to match the integrated experiences they receive in other industries. Financial institutions continuously find themselves under pressure to deliver a mobile-first, customer-centric digital experience to customers throughout their journey starting right from account opening. In order to expedite their digital journey banks and financial institutions have partnered with several Fintech companies to offer their customers a seamless experience. However, often the end user experience is broken as integration of these services into banks’ backend systems takes anywhere between 8 to 9 months.

What is Signzy doing to aid banking transformation in India?

We are a leading provider of AI-based banking workflow automation in the BFSI space. Signzy is working with over 200 financial institutions globally, including the four largest banks in India, and various other businesses to help them transform their banking infrastructure. Our objective is to enable financial institutions to automate their back-office operations, create security and data protection infrastructure, and speed up digitisation for faster customer onboarding and real-time verification and fraud detection. With over 240 Fintech API pre-integrated on the platform, Signzy assists banks become digital ready from day one and expedite customers’ digital journey.

What are Signzy’s plans in UAE, given that you entered the market earlier this year?

UAE is one of the fastest growing global financial hubs in the world. As per the Global Financial Centre Index for 2021, Dubai ranked 19th among top 116 financial centres in the world. The UAE Digital Government Strategy 2025 also signals the need to expedite the tech transformation, in government services, and industry. Signzy is thus eager to play a crucial role in enabling the digital transformation in the BFSI and Fintech industry in the region. We have partnered with Seed Group, a company of Dubai’s Royal Maktoum family to expand and accelerate our operations in the Emirates and the wider Middle East. The Seed Group partnership helps us reach the right audience, access top decision-makers in government and private sectors, and market our products effectively in the region.

To further strengthen our presence in the EMEA and APAC region, we have recently appointed former PayPal India enterprise business head, Siddharth Dhamija as Signzy’s Chief Growth Officer. Signzy is committed to taking the best products and technologies to the region to help companies automate and digitize their banking infrastructure.

We aim to triple our growth in the region by the end of fiscal 2022.