Guarding Against Identity Frauds: Best KYC (Know Your Customer) providers in the UK
October 10, 2023
KYC software, short for Know Your Customer software, enables financial institutions, companies, and organisations to comply with Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations. This process is critical to ensure these organisations are not inadvertently involved in money laundering, terrorist financing, or other illegal activities.
The global KYC software market was valued at USD 2.93 billion in 2021 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.8% from 2022 to 2030. The market’s growth can be attributed to the growing importance of compliance management and the rising number of identity-related frauds in financial institutions.
In the UK, with its robust financial sector and stringent regulatory environment, several KYC software vendors cater to various business needs. Here are some notable KYC providers in the UK market:
Onfido #
Website: https://onfido.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/onfido/
Headquarters: 📍London
Size: 650+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: 4.8
Rating on G2: 4.4
Founded in 2012 in London by Husayn Kassai, Eamon Jubbawy, and Ruhul Amin, Onfido specialises in identity verification using artificial intelligence. Core services include document verification, facial recognition & liveness detection, customer due diligence and biometric verifications for financial institutions. Onfido’s platform supports identity document verification from over 195 countries. These encompass a range of documents, such as passports, driving licences, and other official identification forms to manage customer risk.
Onfido’s AI solution helps reduce the operational cost of KYC processes by automating operations, delivering checks in seconds, and removing the need for lengthy manual reviews. Onfido meets several global compliance program standards, including ETSI TS 119 461, ETSI EN 319 401, eIDAS Regulation EU 2014/910, and scores ‘high confidence’ on the UK Government’s Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework.
ComplyAdvantage #
Website: https://complyadvantage.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/complyadvantage/
Headquarters: 📍London
Size: 450+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: 4.0
Rating on G2: 4.0
ComplyAdvantage provides AI-driven risk data products to help organisations manage their obligations related to anti-money laundering (AML) and other financial crimes. ComplyAdvantage’s platform offers real-time screening and monitoring against politically exposed persons (PEPs), sanctions lists, and adverse media. Businesses and financial institutions can automate checks against these lists and receive alerts for potential matches, helping them manage customer risk.
PassFort #
Website: https://www.moodys.com/web/en/us/kyc/products/passfort.html
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/passfort-limited/
Headquarters: 📍London
Size: 70+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: n/a
Rating on G2: 4.8
An automated KYC solution and anti-money laundering (AML) platform tailored for financial service providers, offering checks for AML, sanctions, politically exposed persons (PEPs), and customer due diligence. The platform aggregates data from various global sources, both traditional and electronic, to facilitate these checks. PassFort allows businesses to tailor workflows according to their specific regulatory requirements and risk needs.
Trulioo #
Website: https://www.trulioo.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/trulioo/
Headquarters: 📍Vancouver, Canada
Size: 400+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: n/a
Rating on G2: 4.4
Although based in Canada, Trulioo offers a global identity verification service, including robust solutions for the UK market. Trulioo’s GlobalGateway solution provides identity verification for individuals across numerous countries. This means businesses can quickly validate the identities of international customers or users. Besides verifying individuals, Trulioo offers customer due diligence features to verify business entities. This includes details about company registration, key stakeholders, and business status.
NorthRow #
Website: https://www.northrow.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/northrow/
Headquarters: 📍London
Size: 35+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: 4.5
Rating on G2: n/a
NorthRow is an integrated solution providing real-time risk scoring using various data sources, ensuring KYC and AML compliance. Beyond initial checks, NorthRow offers ongoing monitoring and surveillance, which means businesses and financial institutions are alerted to any change in the risk status of their customers. The digital identity verification feature allows companies to digitally confirm individuals' identities without requiring physical documents. The platform incorporates facial recognition technology to compare user selfies with official ID photos, enhancing verification accuracy.
Encompass Corporation #
Website: https://www.encompasscorporation.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/encompass-corporation/
Headquarters: 📍London
Size: 200+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: n/a
Rating on G2: n/a
Encompass platform automates KYC and compliance processes, offering a visualised data workspace with information from multiple global data sources. Encompass assists businesses in managing potential money laundering risks by automating checks against global sanctions, PEP (Politically Exposed Persons), and RCA (Relative and Close Associate) lists. The solution creates a real-time digital KYC profile for every investigation to provide accurate and complete corporate customer due diligence on demand.
SmartSearch #
Website: https://www.smartsearch.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/smartsearch/
Headquarters: 📍Ilkley
Size: 200+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: n/a
Rating on G2: n/a
Provides a one-stop solution for anti-money laundering (AML) checks, including electronic identity verification and sanctions screening. SmartSearch facilitates the electronic verification of individuals by cross-referencing their details against a range of reliable databases. The platform may also offer functionalities to validate official documents relevant to the business.
Amiqus #
Website: https://amiqus.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/amiqus-resolution/
Headquarters: 📍Edinburgh
Size: 60+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: 5.0
Rating on G2: 4.0
Amiqus offers KYC solution and anti-money laundering checks, emphasising accessibility and efficiency. The platform provides functionalities for verifying documents, using technology to detect potential tampering or inauthentic details. A key feature of the platform is its ability to maintain a detailed and time-stamped record of checks and verifications, which is crucial for businesses that must provide evidence of their compliance efforts. With a clear emphasis on usability, Amiqus’s interface is designed to be intuitive and straightforward, catering to users with varying levels of tech proficiency.
Udentify #
Website: https://www.fraud.com/products/udentify-id-verification-and-authentication
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/products/fcase-udentify/
Headquarters: 📍London
Size: 20+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: n/a
Rating on G2: 4.3
Udentify is a product of well-known fraud prevention platform provider fraud.com. Since this vendor builds end-to-end solutions to secure digital customer journeys, you can be sure their KYC solutions contain all the necessary features to keep your business safe and secure. This includes identifying verification, age verification, biometric authentication, customer due diligence, and KBA replacement.
ComplyCube #
Website: https://www.complycube.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/complycube/
Headquarters: 📍London
Size: 10+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: 5.0
Rating on G2: 5.0
ComplyCube is a platform that offers solutions in KYC and AML compliance. Designed to assist businesses in ensuring they adhere to regulatory standards, ComplyCube utilises technology to automate and streamline identity verification and related checks. ComplyCube uses Deep Learning and advanced analytics to perform up to 25 analysis points on ID documents, including detailed checks on visual security elements. Expert human forensics teams complement their AI engine to give financial institutions the highest confidence level and customer relationship experience.
Ondato #
Website: https://ondato.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ondato/
Headquarters: 📍London
Size: 70+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: 4.8
Rating on G2: 4.8
Ondato is a platform that specialises in offering KYC solutions to businesses. The platform includes functionality to assess and verify various identification documents, such as passports, national IDs, and driver’s licenses. Utilising advanced technology, Ondato provides biometric authentication options, like facial recognition, to enhance the accuracy of its checks. As Ondato company claims, their solution provides 99.8% verification accuracy due to combining various technologies, registry checks and KYC specialist input.
Shufti Pro #
Website: https://shuftipro.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/shufti-pro/
Headquarters: 📍London
Size: 70+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: 4.5
Rating on G2: 4.3
ShuftiPro is a digital identity verification service that provides KYC services for businesses. Operating in a domain that increasingly values fast yet accurate user verifications, ShuftiPro employs a blend of Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence to execute its checks. Users can upload various identification documents (like passports, ID cards, and driver’s licenses), which are then checked for authenticity. Recognising that compliance isn’t a one-time task, the platform offers continuous monitoring features to keep businesses informed of any potential changes in compliance requirements or risks associated with their clients.
NameScan #
Website: https://namescan.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/namescan.io/
Headquarters: 📍Chatswood
Size: 10+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: 4.7
Rating on G2: 4.2
Namescan is a digital platform offering KYC and AML solutions for businesses seeking compliance with global regulatory standards. Namescan provides screenings against global PEP lists and sanction databases to help enterprises avoid inadvertently engaging with individuals who might be considered high-risk. In addition to governmental sources, Namescan checks individuals or businesses against global news sources to detect any negative news or adverse media that may suggest risk. Namescan company prioritises user experience and customer relationships in their business so you can be sure your team will always get support on time and in good quality.
IDWise #
Website: https://www.idwise.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idwise/
Headquarters: 📍London
Size: 30+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: n/a
Rating on G2: n/a
IDWise is a KYC compliance solution designed for businesses to streamline their customer onboarding processes and ensure regulatory compliance. Like many of its counterparts, IDWise offers scanning of identification documents, including passports, driver’s licenses, and national ID cards. IDWise offers unlimited field ID extraction tailored to your specific needs, as well as best-in-class Latin and non-Latin character document extraction. This means that you can trust IDWise to provide accurate and reliable results no matter where your customers are located.
Checkboard #
Website: https://checkboard.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/usecheckboard/
Headquarters: 📍London
Size: 20+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: n/a
Rating on G2: n/a
Checkboard is a digital KYC compliance solution designed to assist businesses in customer identity verification, ensuring user authenticity, regulatory compliance, and customer risk management. Using a trained AI, Checkboard helps verify whether the client is the same person on the ID document. It also provides a possibility to confirm the residential address of a client by using data from the electoral roll and credit files.
MemberCheck #
Website: https://membercheck.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/membercheck/
Headquarters: 📍Chatswood
Size: 10+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: 4.8
Rating on G2: 5.0
MemberCheck offers a Know Your Business (KYB) solution to assist companies in managing KYC processes by providing a comprehensive tool for customer due diligence. The business verification solution performs automated checks on business customers and partners, covering identity verification, sanctions and PEP checks, transaction screening, and negative news searches. This flexible solution allows customisation of the KYC process based on specific requirements.
MemberCheck is designed to integrate smoothly with existing systems and processes, ensuring a hassle-free deployment without significant operational disruptions. Using the MemberCheck KYC software, organisations can perform rigorous due diligence, safeguarding against potential risks like money laundering and terrorist financing.
RiskScreen #
Website: https://riskscreen.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/riskscreen/
Headquarters: 📍Jersey
Size: 50+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: n/a
Rating on G2: 4.0
RiskScreen is a Know Your Customer remediation platform that simplifies and automates the customer remediation process, which is traditionally a labour-intensive task for operations and compliance teams. RiskScreen reduces redundant requests and improves customer experience by asking customers for information only once and then reusing the already provided data for future automated KYC checks. The solution can automatically determine which data is outdated or missing.
Customer testimonials suggest that RiskScreen makes the account opening, onboarding, and ongoing monitoring of clients effortless, reducing AML risks and promptly detecting regulatory requirements issues.
ClearDil #
Website: https://www.cleardil.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cleardil/
Headquarters: 📍London
Size: 10+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: 5.0
Rating on G2: n/a
ClearDil offers end-to-end KYC software to support businesses in meeting their Anti Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements. ClearDil’s solution is an integrated platform combining a modern Web Portal and a developer-friendly API. The platform automates KYC and AML compliance, reducing manual processes, delays, and errors associated with customer identification. ClearDil provides KYC functionality such as PEP and sanctions checks, negative media screenings, and enhanced due diligence to keep businesses updated about any changes with their higher-risk customers in real-time.
With ClearDil, businesses can seamlessly integrate ID verification, identity verification, and AML checks. The entire KYC onboarding process to verify customer information takes just 15 seconds using ClearDil’s flow.
Veriff #
Website: https://www.veriff.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/veriff/
Headquarters: 📍Tallin
Size: 400+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: 4.0
Rating on G2: 4.5
Veriff is an Estonian company that provides Know Your Customer (KYC) solutions worldwide, including in the UK. The company’s mission is to help businesses accurately assess customer risk and ensure compliance with changing KYC regulations.
Verification encompasses customer identification programs (CIP) to check personal identifiable information (PII), customer due diligence at varying levels, and ongoing monitoring due to ever-evolving regulatory environments. Veriff supports over 11,000 identity documents from over 190 countries in more than 47 languages.
Feedzai #
Website: https://feedzai.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/feedzai/
Headquarters: 📍San Mateo, CA
Size: 500+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: 4.7
Rating on G2: n/a
Feedzai is an American company with an office in London that provides advanced Know Your Customer (KYC) and Customer Due Diligence (CDD) services to businesses, focusing on customer risk profiling that evolves dynamically from onboarding through ongoing activity. Feedzai reacts to the ever-changing nature of customer risk, providing proactive notifications for watchlist matches and significant profile changes, ensuring businesses can address risks before the next planned review. Feedzai’s KYC solution is ideal for various financial institutions, including retail banks, corporate banks, fintechs, and payment service providers (PSPs).
SEON #
Website: https://seon.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/seon-tech/
Headquarters: 📍Budapest, Hungary
Size: 200+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: 4.9
Rating on G2: 4.6
SEON is a Hungarian company with an office in London which promises an effortless customer onboarding experience with checks running silently in the background, ensuring quicker and more efficient verification processes. Their system can identify matches from various databases, including sanctions, PEP (Politically Exposed Persons), RCA (Relatives and Close Associates), crime lists, and watch lists, providing a holistic view of the potential customer. SEON covers global lists across multiple regions and continually updates its database. It also supports multiple writing systems, including Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Japanese, and Persian.
Jumio #
Website: https://www.jumio.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/jumio-corporation/
Headquarters: 📍Sunnyvale, California
Size: 700+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: n/a
Rating on G2: 4.1
This American company, with an office in London, provides AI-driven services for verifying the identities of new and existing users. Among the most popular identity-proofing features of Jumio are validation of the user’s ID, corroboration with a selfie to ensure the user’s presence, and advanced liveness detection. Jumio has coverage in over 200 countries with support for over 5,000 ID types.
LexisNexis Risk Solutions #
Website: https://risk.lexisnexis.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lexisnexis/
Headquarters: 📍New York City, NY
Size: 10,000+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: n/a
Rating on G2: 4.4
At its core, the KYC solution aims to provide an in-depth understanding of customer risk across the entirety of their relationship with a financial institution. Implementing an effective workflow throughout the customer’s lifecycle enhances the Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures and plays a pivotal role in preventing the infiltration of potentially harmful actors. This keeps the institution’s integrity intact, shielding it from potential compliance and reputational damages.
Customer identification and verification see further enhancement with features like instant verification and onboarding facilities for clients spanning over 30 countries. The system ensures the authenticity of identification documents through instant authentication and detailed forensic analysis. The onboarding process also benefits from rapid KYC screenings, enabling faster client integrations and accurate risk assessments.
Refinitiv #
Website: https://www.refinitiv.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/refinitiv/
Headquarters: 📍London
Size: 10,000+ Employees
Rating on Capterra: 4.6
Rating on G2: 4.3
Refinitiv Qual-ID is a sophisticated digital identity verification and risk screening solution tailored primarily for financial service institutions. Designed to ensure a secure, efficient, and accurate verification process, it operates by tapping into the World-Check Risk Intelligence data to unravel potential financial crime-related risks coupled with a robust identity network. This is all executed via one seamless API technology. Their digital identity verification feature establishes the legitimacy of a person’s identity by comparing the provided attributes with data from independent, trustworthy sources. The solution offers coverage in over 35 countries.
Conclusion #
To wrap things up, KYC services ensure businesses know who they’re dealing with to avoid potential risks associated with financial misconduct. Given its dynamic financial ecosystem, the UK houses an array of KYC providers, each with unique capabilities and strengths. The vendors listed here represent a mix of seasoned industry leaders and innovative newcomers, all striving to offer the best solutions for businesses.