Must-Have Functions of a Business Verification (KYB) Service

You probably already heard of identity verification, but what about a slightly different version of it? The process of business verification, also known as Know Your Business (KYB) checks, involves verifying a company before partnering with it or starting a new business relationship.

Different from individual client onboarding, business verification ensures that you avoid the risks of getting involved with another company that is either fraudulent or doesn’t meet your standards. Hiding the real owners due to sanctions or laundering funds through offshore entity structures is still a more common issue than you might think. This is why you use business verification services.

Manual vs. Automated Business Verification

Previously, compliance teams working on corporate entity onboarding used to manually do their due diligence. That means using simple tactics like googling and looking up corporate registries, seeing where or if the company is legally registered, checking the address, and whether it matches. This wasn’t enough.

Compared to automated business verification software, the manual approach to KYB soon showed that it lacked:

• Speed. Pulling registry documents or waiting days to get a response.
• Consistency. Different analysts worked the same case, which meant ambiguity was an issue in the final decision if the company was valid to be approved.
• Coverage. Global companies that are operating in various countries needed to be verified in each one, which made this cross-border KYB onboarding even more difficult.
• Lack of data. Manual reviews mainly meant checking registries and sanctions lists, which is simply incomparable with today’s software capabilities that can check multiple databases for you at the same time.

Business verification includes a more complex process, requiring checks on directors, shareholders, sanctions, and company formation documents. This often meant weeks or months of data collection and manual cross-checking against internal databases, Excel sheets, and custom blacklists.

Key Benefits of AI-Powered Business Verification

So, apart from the standard pros and better efficiency, automated KYB services help companies:

• Achieve higher accuracy. Special name-matching models cut out false positives and flag real risks that then point compliance teams in the right direction.
• Handle corporate documents. This means customizing templates and forms that help gather the required documents, such as articles of incorporation.
• Detect high-risk individuals. This includes identifying Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs) without having to manually trace the complete ownership chain.
• Assess other risks. Some automated business verification tools use risk-scoring mechanisms to check whatever you want, based on the custom workflow that you create; for example, re-verify registry filings or watchlists, even after the company has already been approved.

iDenfy, a platform specializing in a global, leading business verification service, simplifies corporate client onboarding by automating all these processes that would otherwise be done manually. This helps save tons of time and, simultaneously, maintain an audit log and access up-to-date registry data. iDenfy users, including established players like FTMO, have replaced manual KYB tasks with automation, such as UBO verification, saving at least 40 hours per week.

How Pre-Defined Rules in KYB Software Work

One of these main KYB service capabilities that make the biggest difference in the “automation” term is custom workflows or pre-defined rules. They help companies set a tailored flow, which includes factors like risks that the company has defined in-house or regulation-specific requirements linked to the operating industry.

For example, iDenfy’s business verification service lets you use no-code dynamic workflows, reducing friction for both users and analysts. At the same time, it offers:

• Rule-based automation, meaning you can block a company instantly or flag it for extra review based on the parameters that you choose before you even set out to use this workflow to onboard a company.
• Custom blocklists, which can be used to match received information about the company that the representatives provided, cross-matching it against both corporate registries and your predefined rules.
• Easily downloadable reports, with compiled information for a company profile with details from official sources, including government registries, credit bureaus, SOS filings, and VAT/EIN check results, all collected automatically through that custom workflow.
• Monitoring and case management, enabling you to assign cases and send high-risk prioritized entities to a separate list while rechecking companies based on risk signals that you choose, so that ongoing monitoring, especially on low-risk entities, won’t be used if unnecessary.

Implementing an automated business verification service or random KYB software is not enough. The KYB service market is saturated with different ads and promises. However, you should know your own risk appetite and priorities for a potential vendor before moving to the next steps, like trying out the sandbox environment. This is simply because you don’t want to waste time on a solution that isn’t up to your standards.

Why Use iDenfy for Automating Your KYB Workflows

iDenfy is one of the few KYB service providers that has an end-to-end KYB platform with all the needed compliance automation components in one place:

• Global data coverage, especially relevant if you operate in multiple markets and deal with cross-border clients.
• Risk-based no-code templates for tailoring KYB onboarding based on the entity type, risk level, and jurisdiction. You can choose from existing workflows that are carefully designed based on standard industry requirements (for example, for crypto/fintech, etc.)
• AI compliance agent that can run 24/7, fully automating and approving low-risk entity onboarding (during the weekends as well) and automatically detecting mismatches, like a director missing in the filing, for further review.

iDenfy also has built-in Anti-Money Laundering (AML) screening and monitoring, and individual client verification for the company’s related individuals under the same dashboard. This helps you save costs and reduce the need to partner with multiple vendors.

About iDenfy

iDenfy is an identity and business verification platform that automates KYC/KYB and AML workflows, simplifying daily compliance management for regulated businesses across sectors such as fintech, crypto, and iGaming. iDenfy’s KYB API provides access to 180+ corporate registries, helping firms reach an ~80% conversion rate, above the current industry standard for corporate clients.