Tag: Compliance

Artesian: DueDil Rebrands as FullCircl

The new FullCircl homepage

Artesian: Duedil rebranded as FullCircl and staked out the Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) space as its TLA (three-letter acronym).  The UK-based firm was created last September when Artesian and Duedil merged and temporarily adopted the cumbersome Artesian: DueDil name.

“The rebrand, which unifies and consolidates the previous two company’s solutions, is more than just a name change,” explained FullCircl.  “It’s a stake in the ground, as FullCircl seeks to enter a new and distinct market category.”

“In a nutshell, we help our customers find, engage with, and quickly onboard the right customers, and then keep them for life,” explained CEO Andrew Yates.  “Customer Lifecycle Intelligence is vital in every step of that process which if done well creates a virtuous circle.  We couldn’t think of a better name given the fact we help with every stage of the customer journey – we go full-circle.”

“Today marks a new chapter in our evolution as we unveil our bold vision for the future.  The cost to acquire and serve continues to rise.  Regulated businesses need to find customers that fit their business and risk profile faster, onboard them quicker while satisfying legal and regulatory requirements, and keep them for life to grow and scale efficiently.  FullCircl is on a mission to help them do just that.  With FullCircl businesses can move really fast, whether it’s automated data collection and critical checks, ensuring compliance, confidently targeting the right customers, or growing advocacy through frictionless onboarding and support.  We give them the speed to succeed.”

FullCircl COO Justin Fitzpatrick

Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) complements Customer Lifecycle Management and addresses many challenges facing regulated financial services companies.  First, CLI helps them identify the right customers that fit both business requirements and risk appetite.  It then supports rapid onboarding with little friction, as the data gathering process is significantly reduced.  Finally, CLI supports ongoing Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML), and credit checks both during the onboarding process and proactively across the customer lifecycle.

CLM has a trio of shortcomings that CLI addresses:

  1. CLM requires too much customer input that slows the onboarding process
  2. CLM is reactive
  3. CLM does not provide recommendations around which accounts to target and which ones to avoid.

FullCircl helps its customers “do better business, faster,” with rapid data ingestion, data validation, and data enrichment support.  By expediting the data gathering process and validating the data, friction is removed from onboarding workflows.

Removing friction both reduces costs and onboarding time and increases customer conversion rates.  By combining a broad set of customer intelligence, CLI also reduces compliance and financial risk while improving the customer experience.  Furthermore, because CLI is proactive and rules-based, it flags both risks and opportunities earlier than traditional processes while offering continuous compliance and automated remediation.

“At the point at which you’ve identified and engaged with that customer, you need to be able to offer them a seamless onboarding experience, which ticks the boxes from a compliance and regulatory perspective [and] from a financial risk perspective,” explained COO Justin Fitzpatrick to GZ Consulting.  “This is part of the rationale for why we brought the two businesses together…Keeping the customers for life and taking CLM from a reactive process to a proactive process.”

One of the difficulties facing financial services is risk banding new clients and scheduling periodic customer reviews (e.g., 6, 12, or 18 months).  This process “puts a tremendous strain on the organization, because they’re having to go back through that back book, flag anything that’s changed…[and] falls outside of the risk and compliance policies of the organization,” continued Fitzpatrick.  “The ideal solution is you’ve pre-screened the customer so that you can lead them through that seamless onboarding journey, but then…constantly stay on top of them.  So, when changes occur, those changes are automatically cross-referenced against your policies, and your people are alerted and flagged about what’s changed and what they need to do about it.  That’s the vision around CLI.”

FullCircl combines Artesian’s event monitoring and alerting capabilities with DueDil’s B.I.G. API real-time company and contact intelligence.  The combined dataset includes both structured and unstructured information derived from official data sources and the open web.  Sources include registered company financials; mortgages, charges, and county court judgments; gazette status (e.g., bankruptcies, winddowns); Companies House images; directors and shareholders; politically exposed persons; sanctions lists; web-mined intelligence; and business events.

FullCircl also provides a set of derived data that assesses connections within the data.  Derived data includes 270 million corporate connections for the UK and Ireland, industry keywords, and embedded logic to identify the ultimate beneficial owner.

FullCircl also offers a rules engine with off-the-shelf rules for defining organizational policies.  It is a “low-code decision engine that allows financial institutions to codify policies for credit and risk, or advanced pre-qualification, applying these rules at the point of need.”  In addition, the rules engine supports initial onboarding, periodic reviews, and account alerts.

“The rules engine is effectively a dictionary of more than 500 off-the-shelf rules that can be combined into policies that allow you to construct any kind of combination of…[rules and] the policies of your organization…[It] has two uses in the FullCircl offering going forward.  The first is related to proactive alerts.  You define the policy with a set of criteria about a business, and anytime a business comes into those criteria or falls out of them, you get alerted…The second use case is around screenings or periodic reviews.  You might have a book of 15,000 customers, and you want to periodically go ahead and review the whole thing…[You] run those businesses through that screening functionality, which is basically checking the status of those businesses against the rules that have been defined.”

The launch of FullCircl comes as challenger banks are rapidly digitizing their workflows and looking to contain costs and automate customer onboarding, risk monitoring, and portfolio reviews.

“Good RMs are expensive.  There’s a certain size of customer for which it doesn’t really make sense to have one-to-one personal account management or relationship management.  Digital challenger banks are picking up on this and trying to go to market with a proposition that is digital-first.  They’ve stripped out the cost of the branches and the big footprint, and they’re trying to be smart about how they apply data to make these products and services more personalized,” said Fitzpatrick.  “But even the incumbent banks have to move to a model which leverages technology better.  In some cases, a smaller team of relationship managers is pooling together and monitoring a much bigger book of customers.  Pooling like this becomes incredibly important for them…to stay on top of all of those customers and to know how, and when, to interact with them.”

FullCircl supports over 600 customers, three-quarters of which are in the regulated financial services sector.  Last year, they added 120 new logos in the UK and posted double-digit revenue growth.

FullCircl’s manifesto is to help financial services companies “find customers that fit your risk profile, onboard them quicker, and keep them for life.”

ZoomInfo Business Contact Preference Registry

ZoomInfo launched its Business Contact Preference Registry (BCPR), a centralized registry for recording B2B opt-out requests which will be shared across the industry.  The BCPR is ZoomInfo’s latest step in burnishing its data privacy positioning.

“The collection of data is central to businesses in the B2B data industry, but the responsibility of ethical data stewardship falls onto the shoulders of each individual company,” wrote the firm.  “As industry leaders in data privacy, ZoomInfo has made it easier for businesses in the B2B data marketplace to address the preferences of consumers by building, maintaining, and sharing access to the BCPR.”

“It’s critical for data-focused companies to prioritize privacy. The Business Contact Preference Registry offers businesses a convenient way to prioritize privacy by supplying the entire B2B data industry with a ready-made list of consumer opt-outs. We’re proactively sharing our opt-outs as an invitation to B2B companies to join us in putting privacy first.”

Bubba Nunnery, ZoomInfo’s Senior Director of Privacy and Public Policy

I had been flagging data privacy as a weakness in ZoomInfo’s model, which could slow their entry to the European market post-COVID, but they have been actively working to shore up their data privacy practices and demonstrate that they are respectful of the data they hold. 

ZoomInfo developed a proactive data compliance program based upon “notice and choice” that notifies business professionals about ZoomInfo’s data.  The program is global in scope, so not limited to countries that require notifications.  ZoomInfo also expanded its data privacy team earlier this year, naming Hannah Zimmerman, ZoomInfo’s Privacy Counsel and Bubba Nunnery, Senior Director, Privacy and Public Policy.

ZoomInfo data privacy certifications

“Our business is founded on the trust our customers have in our data,” said General Counsel Anthony Stark back in March. “Collecting data is central to all businesses, and it’s our job to be ethical stewards of the data we hold.  ZoomInfo adheres to its core privacy tenets of transparency and control, showcasing that we are respectful of the rights of consumers while providing critical service to our customers.”

In May, ZoomInfo announced that it received GDPR and CCPA Practices Validation from TrustArc, saying that its policies “are in line with the strictest privacy regulations in the world.”

“Organizations of all sizes must become privacy-forward to earn the trust of their customers,” said Chris Babel, CEO, TrustArc. “ZoomInfo understands that building trust requires an ongoing, scalable approach to data privacy. The organization has consistently prioritized privacy as the enabler of a better experience for its customers and their subscribers, and the TrustArc GDPR and CCPA Validations reinforce that standing.”

“ZoomInfo is leading the way in data privacy.  We are working to accept opt-outs from other vendors as part of our efforts to elevate privacy standards across the B2B data industry.”

CEO Henry Schuck

The BCPR is an excellent idea, but I’m not sure whether the registry should be hosted by one of the major vendors in the space.  ZoomInfo plans on accepting opt outs from other vendors, but It is unclear whether other vendors would promote ZoomInfo in the lead data collection role. Preferably, it would be hosted by a government agency such as the FTC, which manages the US Do Not Call Registry, or a neutral body similar to the ICANN domain registry.  DataGrail, a leader in data privacy compliance, could administer an independent database across businesses and consumers.

Artesian 2020-21 Growth

London-based Artesian Solutions announced strong growth and EBITDA profitability in its 2020 – 2021 fiscal year (31 March FYE).  The company outpaced its revenue goal by 135% and posted a net retention rate of 110%.  Turnover grew 15% last year.

Artesian Solutions supports both sales intelligence (Engage) and financial services onboarding and risk assessment (Connect).

The firm has long been profitable, with a 9X LTV/CAC ratio (Lifetime Value to Customer Acquisition Cost).  Furthermore, customers have been integrating the Artesian platform into their workflows, with 65% of new business coming from platform-leveraged transactions.

While Artesian continues to offer sales intelligence tools, its recent focus has been on serving the financial services space.  In January 2021, it launched Artesian Connect, “a new platform that combines the latest advances in data-science with the world’s best business information to solve complex, high-value frontline execution challenges such as client pre-screening for risks and opportunities, triage and credit scoring, underwriting risks, accelerated client onboarding, screening and remediation of back-book, monitoring for early warning indicators / enhanced lead indicators.”

Artesian Connect includes a bespoke rules-processing engine that captures client know-how, including business rules, sales preferences, prospecting criteria, and onboarding checks.  Connect supports both Artesian’s Premium Data feeds and customer-licensed third-party data integrations. 

By combining first and third-party datasets with business rules and existing policies in Connect, the customer engagement process can be streamlined and standardized across large teams.  Some of Artesian’s customers have thousands of users, so improving efficiency without impacting the customer experience is critical to successful implementations.

As rules and policies have been codified, employees do not need to review as much company intelligence.  Instead, decision-making is reduced to the core information.  Supported processes include sales engagement, onboarding, KYC/AML, insurance policy underwriting, and business-specific steps and requirements. 

“It’s been a pivotal and transformational year for Artesian.  We’ve set new benchmarks in terms of growth and profitability by addressing head-on the disruption caused by COVID-19, being in a strong position to help our customers help theirs, and by harnessing the world’s largest source of intelligence in combination with the latest advances in data science to help our customers solve their most complex challenges and realise their highest-value opportunities.  As we move through 2021 and beyond, we will continue to help our customers create more time to spend with their clients by better anticipating needs and navigating the road ahead.”

Artesian CEO Andrew Yates

91% of new revenue came from Financial Services as the company added seventy new clients and expanded the size and duration of contracts during last year’s renewals.

Connect Platform deals were signed with Lombard, QBE Insurance, Triodos Bank, Premium Credit, and Metro Bank, helping drive 22% growth in new business deals.

The firm also expanded the scope of its data licensing partnerships, inking deals with Experian, D&B, Refinitiv, LexisNexis, Graydons, and other business and credit vendors.  These partnerships allow customers to process preferred vendor data through the Connect platform. Like many of its peers, Artesian Solutions has thrived during the pandemic.  Their mobile push notifications have had high usage during WFH, and financial services firms have increased platform utilization due to economic dislocation and CBILS checks.  According to Yates, renewals remain strong, with gross retention in the 90s.

Artesian Connect Platform (Part II)

Continuing my coverage of the new Artesian Connect platform [Part I].

Metro Bank, an early customer, deployed Connect for customer onboarding and back-book screening, complementing their Artesian Engage deployment:

“We started working with Artesian to explore ways we could introduce greater efficiency to the customer onboarding journey. We loved the idea of being able to aggregate data from a number of different sources and map our risk appetite to Artesian’s rules framework to flag issues immediately.  The result meant we could deliver a process which in some cases was 94% quicker than our existing process.”

Ronan Heeran, Financial Crime Risk & Control Manager at Metro Bank

QBE, an early insurance adopter, employed Connect for underwriting and COVID-risk checks, delivering consistent decisioning across its 200 underwriters.  According to QBE Director of Underwriting David Jones, Connect’s configurability let QBE be “proactive, rather than reactive, to changes in data for client assessment.”

Along with a rich set of news event monitoring and triggers, Artesian provides a broad set of Experian UK data, including financials, Companies House images, Gazette filings, Directors and Shareholders, Mortgages and County Court Judgements, Family Trees, and Ultimate Beneficiaries.  Artesian recently added Irish datasets from Experian.  They also offer US and Canadian profiles from a highly credible provider.

Clients can access Artesian Premium Data in Connect or opt to retain preferred vendors.  Connect also provides API connectors for Dun & Bradstreet, LexisNexis, Equifax, Refinitiv, LDC, and Graydon, with more data integrations planned.  Many financial services clients opt to feed their legacy PEP (politically exposed persons) and sanctions list vendors into Connect.

Connect supports a business rules-engine, development toolkit, and scripting engine.  Users can either work with Artesian’s technical consultants to define models or build their own decisioning and customer support tools.  Artesian employs a “3-D” solution process: Discover, Design, Demonstrate.  The 3-D process, combined with the Connect platform, allows Artesian to build complex business requirements in days or weeks, significantly faster than third-party developers.

Artesian has trademarked the term “Know-How Equation,” which describes their method of capturing “collective expertise” to “transform efficiency, efficacy, and consistency of frontline and middle office teams.” The equation is represented as

The Know-How Equation captures a company’s knowledge about its customers, business, and market in the Artesian rules-engine.  Artesian then processes structured and unstructured data to display “impactful insights and risk intelligence needed to deliver the ultimate in business acumen.”

“Artesian Connect can deliver transformational results in client acquisition, client onboarding, risk and compliance monitoring, and relationship management.  With Connect, modern frontline banking teams can rapidly merge disparate data sources, create bespoke rules for risk selection utilising rich firmographic data and, most importantly, deliver insight from unstructured data that paints a much deeper picture for client assessment.”

Artesian CEO Andrew Yates

Artesian has also updated its Engage homepage to provide a custom briefing book to clients.  Features include dynamic Connect calculations, advanced engagement signals, historical screening, and account followers.  Customers can opt for either a data-first view or a news-first view.

Like many of its peers, Artesian Solutions has thrived during the pandemic.  Their mobile push notifications have had high usage during WFH, and financial services firms have increased platform utilization due to economic dislocation and CBILS checks.  According to Yates, renewals remain strong, with gross retention in the 90s and net retention around 110%.

The firm has long been profitable, with a 9X LTV/CAC ratio (Lifetime Value to Customer Acquisition Cost).  Furthermore, customers have been integrating the Artesian platform into their workflows, with 65% of new business coming from platform-leveraged transactions.

Artesian Connect Platform

Artesian Solutions formally launched the Artesian Connect platform aimed at transforming frontline execution and effectiveness.  The platform supersedes ARCH, which was built on the same architecture as Connect.  The expanded platform now supports advanced sales engagement, customer onboarding, Insurance and credit underwriting, and relationship management.

Connect is Generally Available.

Artesian Connect includes a bespoke rules-processing engine that captures client know-how, including business rules, sales preferences, prospecting criteria, and onboarding checks.  Connect supports both Artesian’s Premium Data feeds and customer-licensed third-party data integrations. 

By combining first and third-party datasets with business rules and existing policies, the customer engagement process can be streamlined and standardized across large teams.  Some of Artesian’s customers have thousands of users, so the ability to improve efficiency without impacting the customer experience is critical to successful implementations.  

As rules and policies have been codified, employees do not need to review as much company intelligence.  Instead, decision-making is reduced to the core information.  Supported processes include sales engagement, onboarding KYC/AML, insurance policy underwriting, and business-specific steps and requirements.

Artesian Connect delivers an improved customer experience, reduced employee onboarding time, and standardized processes and rules across all team members, which is particularly important when engagement priorities and regulations change, as they did in March.

CEO Andrew Yates emphasized that Artesian’s focus is not only on data but on rules and the ability to expedite decision-making based on scores and flagged items.  A new feature, engagement signals, go beyond traditional trigger events and look at multiple recent events before offering next best action recommendations. 

Connect supports four modes:

  1. Quick Tasks such as pre-screening customers or performing a CBILS (UK SME COVID business loan) check
  2. Tracking Companies and alerting on events, opportunities, credit changes, filings, etc.  As alerts are based on company-specific rules and policies, they have greater precision than general notifications.
  3. Multi-linked Analyses that evaluate multiple recent events and determine whether a more in-depth analysis of a prospect or loan is required
  4. Other Application Calls based on customer criteria

Platform apps can be delivered via the desktop, mobile device, or a broker management system, with output such as custom proposals delivered as Word Documents or PDFs.

“Artesian Connect is pioneering a new era in modern data and insight-driven Relationship-Banking – helping commercial teams leverage their extensive know-how and by combining this with the latest advances in data science, we can empower them to do what they do best at a scale and speed never seen before,” explained Yates.

Continue to Part II. Yesterday, I covered their new Irish Dataset and expanded UK content.

Artesian Data Extensions

Sales and Risk Intelligence vendor Artesian Solutions announced three data extensions to its company and contact universe: two U.K. dataset extensions and an Irish dataset.  On January 14th, they unveiled their new Connect platform and a broader product vision.

“We’re delighted to kick off 2021 on such a high. These new premium data points are fundamental to the KYC and compliance processes for many of our customers, so it was a logical extension to the data they currently rely on to engage with their customers.“

Artesian CEO Andrew Yates

The first data extension is U.K. County Court Judgments (CCJs) and legal notices such as receiverships and winding-up petitions.  CCJs are useful for financial services onboarding, due diligence, and risk assessment.

The Adverse Director History dataset assists with KYC/AML processes and highlights whether a Director was previously associated with a firm that ended up in insolvency, administration, or bankruptcy.

Artesian already provides access to other compliance datasets such as Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), terrorist lists, and sanctions lists.  Additional details will be released in next week’s platform announcement.

The new Artesian:Connect platform supports custom processing rules and alerting for CCJs and adverse director histories.  Data goes back as far as twenty years.

The Irish dataset provides four years of company financials, director checks, and company news.  Firmographic data includes addresses, trading status, registration numbers, and auditor information.  Company data is available through Artesian Engage, the Artesian Ready app for iOS and Android, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics.  Coverage spans 250,000 companies.  

Artesian did not publicly disclose the Irish data vendor, but it is a highly credible data source.

Artesian Solutions already provides coverage of Britain, the U.S., and Canada.  Customers can license the countries in any combination, including Ireland only, U.K. + Ireland, and all four countries together.

Artesian had a successful 2020 as customers looked for remote vendor solutions for both sales and compliance/onboarding.  Usage was up sharply for both product lines.  According to Chief Customer Officer Mike Blackadder, Artesian’s “training teams have never been so busy.”

Artesian hosted a virtual summit for its Connect platform on January 14th. Coverage continues tomorrow.

ZoomInfo Launches Streaming Intent Based on Clickagy Acquisition

Last week, ZoomInfo picked up its most recent tuck-in, Clickagy, to expand its intent data capabilities. The real-time intent vendor is the basis for ZoomInfo’s new Streaming Intent offering.

Streaming Intent improves the timing and messaging around sales and marketing workflows such as

  • Prioritizing sales outreach to companies that are ready to buy
  • Interacting with prospects earlier in the buyer’s journey to build trust that won’t be present with later stage vendors
  • Triggering automated campaigns that warm-up prospects for your Sales team to call

Streaming Intent delivers real-time behavioral intent data that is “expansive and customizable.”  The Clickagy platform employs an NLP engine that identifies behavioral context in real-time.  Intent data is gathered from over 300,000 publisher domains and includes six trillion-plus new keyword-to-device pairings each month.  Intent data is sourced from over 91 percent of accessible devices in the United States.

Clickagy supports thousands of B2B topics and sub-topics spanning marketing, natural resources, entertainment, business services, government, healthcare, retail goods, and science and technology.

“Innovation in the B2B intent landscape has lagged behind the business-to-consumer landscape for much of the past decade.  Most B2B intent solutions today rely on the same set of underlying data generated by limited media cooperators and third-party cookie tracking.  Existing offerings only provide weekly batches of buyer intent on a finite number of topics because of heavy data processing that takes days to complete, negating opportunities to reach buyers at the opportune moment.  Other solutions offer late-stage intent, where vendors have already been identified, and it is too late for the addition of competing solutions.”

“ZoomInfo: Acquires Clickagy to Deliver Streaming Intent Data,” ZoomInfo Press Release, October 15, 2020.

Clickagy was founded in 2013 and based in Atlanta.  Clickagy CEO Harry Maugans has been named a VP of Product Management.

“Robust business data has always been the biggest hurdle keeping us from offering a transformative B2B product,” said Maugans.  “But now with ZoomInfo, we’re giving sellers and marketers the ability to further propel their go-to-market motions more effectively and efficiently.”

Actionability and usability have been significant issues that slowed the adoption and hampered the ROI of intent data.  Shuck laid out his vision of how Clickagy intent, tied to ZoomInfo company and contact data, will create significant customer value:

“The B2B world has been largely behind the B2C world with respect to using intent to activate go-to-market motions.  The primary reason for this lag is that B2B Intent offerings were never connected to the companies and the professionals at those companies in a way that would allow seamless activation.  By combining Clickagy’s powerful Intent with ZoomInfo’s robust database of companies and professionals, we unlock the power of intent for every B2B Go-to-Market organization…

Soon, go-to-market organizations will be able to build workflows that tell them instantly when Fintech companies in California, who have Snowflake in their tech stack, at least 100 employees, and $50M in funding, begin spiking on research for “cloud data platforms”.  That signal can simultaneously kick-off a workflow that captures the Vice Presidents, Directors, Managers, and other key stakeholders at those Fintech companies, check for open opportunities in CRM, and begin marketing automation, sales automation, and CRM campaigns against those decision makers…

Said another way, our customers will be able to create behavioral filters and overlay them across live web traffic, capture highly-refined intent signals in real time, and make them actionable within seconds.  This lets them engage prospects while they’re still in the research mode with a buying mentality—not weeks later when they’ve moved on to something else, or worse, after they’ve already made their decision.

ZoomInfo CEO Henry Shuck, “Why ZoomInfo is Acquiring Clickagy”

Intent data becomes more valuable when it can cast a wide net, gather and interpret signals with a high level of precision, and promptly deliver these signals.  It is in these dimensions that ZoomInfo has confidence in the breadth and heuristics of its acquisition.

Clickagy opens up the “black box” of intent data rules, offering a “robust and configurable technology that unlocks those algorithms and enables administrators to adjust the logical rules, keywords, inclusions, exclusions, and thresholds used to determine when a company is indeed exhibiting intent for a particular keyword or topic in order to reduce false positives.”  Transparency and configurability provide “unprecedented control” over the quality of intent signals.

Compliance

ZoomInfo Intent complies with privacy rules.  Clickagy does not collect any personally identifiable information.  Information is collected in the aggregate at the account level.  Instead of revealing who is conducting the research, Zoominfo identifies “functional decision-makers” at the account who are likely involved in purchasing decisions related to the intent signal.

Clickagy does not use cookies but instead relies on “privacy clusters” that are “persistent micro-groupings” of approximately 3 to 8 individuals who are “mathematically bound together to act as a single, trackable and targetable entity.”  As no PII is gathered, privacy clusters are consistent with GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, and COPPA.  According to Clickagy, “As they’re not privacy invasive on a 1-to-1 level, Privacy Clusters do not require notice or opt-in consent for tracking.  Privacy Clusters allow brands to maintain the advertising efficacy they are used to while maintaining compliance with constantly changing worldwide privacy legislation.”

Clickagy also offers audience targeting and activation across 300 DMPs and DSPs.  ZoomInfo already supports website visitor intelligence.

Deal terms were not disclosed.  ZoomInfo said the deal would have a non-material impact on their fourth-quarter financial results.  

No company size data was provided, but LinkedIn lists 26 employees at Clickagy.

CCPA Now in Effect

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) went into force this week, but enforcement will be delayed for six months.  “We’re going to help folks understand our interpretation of the law,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.  “And once we’ve done those things, our job is to make sure there’s compliance, so we’ll enforce.”

Microsoft indicated that CCPA will be used as a national standard. Microsoft has already extended EU GDPR compliance globally and called privacy “a fundamental human right.”

“CCPA marks an important step toward providing people with more robust control over their data in the United States,” wrote Microsoft’s Chief Privacy Officer Julie Brill.  “It also shows that we can make progress to strengthen privacy protections in this country at the state level even when Congress can’t or won’t act.”

CCPA requires firms to be transparent in how they collect and use consumer data.  Individuals also have the option to block sales of personal data.  However, “Exactly what will be required under CCPA to accomplish these goals is still developing,” wrote Brill.

Microsoft supports a national privacy law which cover “more robust accountability requirements” including minimizing data collection, transparency around how data is being used, and “making them more responsible for analyzing and improving data systems to ensure that they use personal data appropriately.”

Facebook is hedging, saying “we do not sell people’s data” without acknowledging that its business is based on monetizing member data and that it has a poor history of controlling partner data collection on its platform.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff called Facebook the “new cigarettes for our society,” which undermines societal trust.  On CNN’s Reliable Sources, Benioff called for Facebook to be regulated or split up.  “They’re certainly not exactly about truth in advertising.  Even they have said that.  That’s why we’re really in squarely a crisis of trust, when the core vendor themselves cannot say that trust is our most important value.  Look, we’re at a moment in time where each one of us in every company has to ask a question: What is our highest value?”

“I expect a fundamental reconceptualization of what Facebook’s role is in the world,” continued Benioff.  “When you have an entity that large with that much potential impact, and not fundamentally doing good things to improve the state of the world, well, then I think everyone is going to have it in its crosshairs.”

Artesian ARCH Compliance Released

ARCH combines firmographics, compliance flags, and credit insights into a unified company profile.
ARCH combines firmographics, compliance flags, and credit insights into a unified company profile.

Artesian Solutions, the UK Sales Intelligence vendor, has been teasing its Artesian Risk and Compliance Hub (ARCH) compliance service for over a year.  The new offering, now Generally Available, “enables relationship managers, underwriters and frontline teams within banks, insurance companies, and other financially regulated industries to quickly assess and better understand their corporate clients at the start of the customer journey and throughout the life of the customer.”

Financial services generally perform KYC / AML (Know Your Customer / Anti-Money Laundering) processing during onboarding, but ARCH moves initial processing to frontline staff at the top of the sales funnel before a client is signed.  This “distributed compliance,” helps expedite the process, sets client expectations when processing may take longer than normal, and allows relationship managers to avoid prospects that will have arduous compliance processing or which may not meet the institution’s “appetite.”  

ARCH flags risks which may require additional information from the client.  By flagging them at the outset, the RM can request the missing data before it delays onboarding.

ARCH performs event-driven reviews which begin before onboarding and continue through the life of the loan or policy.  Thus, KYC is no longer subject to periodic reviews but is performed dynamically as new information about the client is ingested by ARCH.  Instead of client reviews determined by the calendar, events can trigger full client reviews as needed.

ARCH supports commercial insurance policy writing “with a combination of data and sophisticated rules, bringing efficiency, consistency, and accuracy so that underwriters can focus on underwriting.  Decisions can be recorded whilst both justified in the future and used for decision analysis and pricing optimisation.”  Artesian’s fine-grained taxonomy and assisted machine learning help to identify potential underwriting risks “according to the predetermined definitions of an insurer.”

By moving compliance reviews to front-line workers, commercial insurers can perform a KYC check and risk evaluation prior to quoting a policy.  “One reason for using it is that they might want to look at what gets declared to them by the new customer compared to what they can see from ARCH,” said Artesian VP of Risk Solutions Matt Elsom.  “To do that they can have a look at some of the fraud-focused data sources and financial data.”

A January survey by Fenergo of global financial services executives found that poor onboarding negatively impacts client experience and reduces the lifetime value (LTV) of clients.  36% acknowledged losing customers due to onboarding issues and 84% tied the onboarding experience to reduced LTV.

“The Cost of Poor CX,” Fenergo, January 2019. N-=250 global Financial Services executives (Source: Artesian Solutions) 

Figure 2: “The Cost of Poor CX,” Fenergo, January 2019. N=250 global Financial Services executives (Source: Artesian Solutions)

Artesian noted that KYC compliance team workloads have “grown beyond all expectations” due to the availability of international ownership linkages and ultimate beneficial ownership data.  “The overall effect of this is an MLRO [Money Laundering Reporting Officer] and board being put under pressure to reduce onboarding delays whilst maintaining adherence to regulation – and the only effective solution has been to recruit more compliance analysts.  The cost associated with this approach has become unsustainable as the work queue continues to grow simply to maintain current levels of new business.”

According to Artesian, “ARCH is not only an innovative new technology, but a huge leap forward in the drive for ‘distributed compliance’ – the ability for central teams to distribute KYC and AML tasks to their frontline colleagues who are best placed to engage with the client and solve issues in the fastest, most productive way.  It places compliance and powerful risk data at the heart of the business – front of mind for every member of staff, informing every decision, instructing every interaction and shaping every relationship from pre-screening prospective new customers through to ongoing tracking and long-standing client development.”

The “configurable decision engine” monitors real-time credit risk and KYC data sets and applies bank or insurer policies to the compliance decisions.  Each client determines which data sources to ingest and “applies custom policies to that combined data in the form of multi-dimensional rules” which are screened and interpreted based upon institutional policies.  Flagged issues are delivered through a browser interface or loaded into other compliance systems via an API.

“We have the great privilege of serving 80% of the UK’s major banking institutions, providing powerful sales engagement insights to relationship managers.  We asked what we could do to make our software even more useful and the answer was ARCH. Almost two years of engineering and millions of pounds later we’re announcing ARCH’s general availability for customers.  We believe this puts Artesian in a unique position to be able to combine customer engagement capabilities together with credit and risk in one single application delivered through a browser or mobile device.”

We’ve built a strong team of specialists to extend our core competencies and have worked closely with our key partners at Experian, LexisNexis, and Refinitiv (Thompson Reuters) with more partnerships to come.  This allows our customers to select the data sources they already rely upon and trust and easily integrate them into ARCH”

Artesian Solutions CEO Andrew Yates

During a beta test with a top UK bank, ARCH decisioning was fully consistent with existing bank processing while flagging 14% more “critical risk” issues than current bank processes.  ARCH also reduced average case time from two hundred minutes to eight, “allowing relationship managers to know more, know sooner and save time – enabling them to focus on delivering a better customer experience.”

PwC recently added ARCH to its eleven-week incubator program Scale InsureTech which is “aimed at identifying and developing fast-growth technology companies in the insurance sector.”

Artesian financial services clients include RBS, Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, EY, and Marsh.

North American sales intelligence firms do not normally support client onboarding and risk assessment, but UK and European firms support these functions due to a richer set of registry data.  European vendors such as DueDil, Bureau van Dijk, and Artesian support sales, marketing, and regulatory compliance.

GDPR First Anniversary (Is Your Data More Secure?)

EU Flag

As GDPR hit its first anniversary on Saturday, Microsoft once again called for a US privacy law which shifts the onus of data privacy from the individual to corporations.  Today, Americans operate in an opt-out regime which requires them to find and manage their privacy settings.

“This places an unreasonable — and unworkable — burden on individuals,” wrote Microsoft’s Deputy General Counsel Julie Brill.  “Strong federal privacy should not only empower consumers to control their data, it also should place accountability obligations on the companies that collect and use sensitive personal information.”

Microsoft prefers a single federal standard to piecemeal state-level laws such as California’s CCPA.  Brill said the legislation should be interoperable with the GDPR to help reduce the “cost and complexity of compliance.”  This framework should reflect ”the changing understanding of the right to privacy in the United States and around the world.”  The proposed legislation should “uphold the fundamental right to privacy through rules that give people control over their data and require greater accountability and transparency in how companies use the personal information they collect.”

“For American businesses, interoperability between U.S. law and GDPR will reduce the cost and complexity of compliance by ensuring that companies don’t have to build separate systems to meet differing—and even conflicting requirements—for privacy protection in the countries where they do business,” said Brill.

According to eMarketer analyst Ross Benes, the US ad industry has shifted from a call for self-regulation to supporting national privacy regulations, fearing ”a patchwork of different rules” as “legislation looks increasingly inevitable.”

A TrustArc/Ipsos survey of UK adults (16 – 75) found a 36% improvement in trust concerning personal data since GDPR went into effect.

Source: TrustArc / Ipsos GDPR Survey of 2,230 UK adults (May 2019)

A Snow study found that 39% of global business professionals believe their data is better protected since GDPR passed, with the biggest increase in the APAC region (48%).  40% of Europeans also believed their personally identifiable information is more secure, but only 30% in the US held the same belief.

74% of surveyed professionals believe that the technology industry needs more regulation with 83% of APAC and 72% of US respondents wanting additional tech regulation.

The EU has yet to strictly enforce the law with only one large fine ($56M) versus Google in France. However, Google and the social media and advertising companies are all subject to ongoing suits:

The latest investigation — the first by the Irish watchdog into Google — brings to 19 the number of open cases by the regulator targeting big U.S. tech companies. They include probes into Apple Inc., Twitter Inc., eight probes into Facebook Inc., plus one into Instagram and two into WhatsApp.

Los Angeles Times, “Google could face hefty EU fine over possible privacy violations,” May 22, 2019

“What is important to recognize is that the EU is taking GDPR very seriously, with fines being established for any breach,” said Ben Feldman, SVP of strategy and innovation at NYIAX.  “I would expect that the first six-to-nine months of any new regulation action would be spent working out the kinks and processes of implementation.  It is quite likely that we will see more fines in the coming months.”