The modular approach I used for designing a comprehensive KYC/ KYB process.
Many years ago, I joined a Fintech company that Introduces itself as a digital bank. As a product designer, I was responsible for designing the KYC and KYB for a wide range of clients. Here I shared the process I went through.
We had two types of clients; Individual clients and business(merchant) clients. It goes without saying that individuals and business clients with different user personalities had different reasons and expectations for using the product. Accordingly, the KYC check should contain different steps to accumulate various types of information.
But before all, let answer a big question:
What is KYC meaning and Why do we need to have a KYC check?
KYC or KYC check is the mandatory process of identifying and verifying the identity of the client when opening an account and periodically over time. In other words, banks must make sure that their clients are genuinely who they claim to be.
KYC procedures defined by companies (in this case a bank) involve all the necessary actions to make sure their customers are real, assess, and monitor risks. Also, Banks must comply with KYC regulations and anti-money laundering(AML) regulations to limit fraud.
Now we know, how much knowing the customer is important. Accordingly, I going to write about what I did to fulfils this need!
What was the process?
- Examining the problem
- Making the requirements clear
- Defining the user flow and information architecture
- Designing the process (part by part)
- Make the modules ready for integration
- Assemble the parts based on your need
- Test the final result
As a digital bank, we wanted to change the user experience of most of the activities.
In comparison to traditional banks, some important actions like opening bank account or user identification had to be done digitally but for achieving this goal, we required to verify user identity reliably. In that country(Iran), The digital signature isn’t common and there was no digital reliable database for user identification; therefore we were forced to verify user identity and their confirmation independently.
I started the process by talking with the stakeholders; Include Product Managers, Business owners, etc.
Then I checked lots of digital banks in other countries plus other domestic competitors. Most importantly, I was concentrated on the countries that had similar banking infrastructure/statement and user culture/behavior to my country. The main purpose of such a benchmarking was getting familiar with the solutions that already exist and being inspired for generating new ideas based on the exact situation we had.
After understanding the problem and taking time to research, I find out we need a comprehensive KYC check that would be worked for both B2b and B2c based products simultaneously.
More precisely, they need to have a KYC check for those people that trying to open an account for their company(business) or their personal daily banking. In other to simplifying the requirement, I categorised the needs based on the type of the product:
KYC check for business customers:
- Personal information (the identity of the person who tries to open an account for a business) includes uploading documents & address verification.
- Business information (Identity of the business that the user is trying to register an account for) include uploading business document and company identity check.
- Representer information (the identity of people that related to business) same process as personal information for each stakeholder.
- Product selection (the services and products that the business going to work with)
- Get an appointment for an in-person identity-check
KYC check for Individual clients:
- Personal information
- Product selection
- Get an appointment for an in-person identity-check
Based on the atomic design approach, I combined some components from our design system to create several new templates and pages.
Simulating the user navigation flow helped me to find out that there were two missing parts in the user experience, a staging page, and a solution for more encreasing user retention.
The former was mandatory because passing the KYC check from a-z takes time. Accordingly, often time users need to complete the whole process in more than one session. Whenever the user come back to resume the process, we should inform them about the last state and enable them to move forward through the process.
The latter was important because every single interrupt in the KYC check means a percentage of churns. In order to avoid more churns, we needed a strong retention plan. The best way I identified for having more retention after any interruption in the process was a mixture of sending high-priority notifications and sending a text message as a backup.
Eventually, The architecture has been shaped as you can see in the following:
Good to mention that each stage can consist of more than a screen.
The final design
I designed the staging page plus five major parts of the KYC check process, in the following I’ll share them — the language of design in Farsi (designed for domestic users).
Staging pages:
If the user decided to complete the KYC check process in two or more sessions(visit), Just can resume from one of the following checkpoints:
1: Personal information:
This stage was consist of the following steps:
- Name, Family, Personal ID
- Taking picture & uploading documents
The essential documents were Forward & backward of ID and birth certificate. These steps required permission for access to the camera & gallery. - Address confirmation
There was a sequence for choosing an address. province, City, Street/town, Alley, house & flat number. the user has to choose from lists and then specify the postal code; Then we matched all of them together, so all inputs have to be consistent. - IBAN
If the user had an IBAN number from another local bank account, we asked him/her to give us this number for a background check.
2. Business information
Based on a modular design approach, I used the same “address conformation” and “document uploader” in the step.
Briefly, this stage was consist of the following steps:
- Basic information
Company name, type of business, Register number - Category of activities
- Office address
- Additional information
Number of employees, Number of official representers (Stakeholders) - Uploading documents
Article of associations, Certificates, Logo
3. Business Representer
We’ve considered every single stakeholder as an individual client and asked them to enter their information as we structured it in the “personal information” step.
4. Product selection:
In this stage, we offered our services and let users pick their desired ones.
We had a wide range of services that I willing to mention some of them in the following:
- ETF and non-ETF funds
- Wallet
- QR-code based payment for merchants
- Credit
- Ability to opening account in some partner banks
- etc
Recap & conclusion:
In summary, I broke down a big task and converted that into some smaller parts. Designing a KYC check process for the baking client is complicated and time-consuming as well. Include lots of consideration for making the product completely integrated and easy to maintain. In this article, I just wrote down straight scenarios, not the exception and unexpected conditions.
I learned how the modular thinking/designing model can help me to reduce the cost of design. I defined some templates and pages and arranged them with different combinations to create a process.
I was part of the designing team which designed the whole features and Products of the KianDigital (early 2018) for both Android and iOS separately.
Please share your thought with me.
Thank you for your time.
