Knight Frank
NorthRow’s digital transformation of Knight Frank’s client compliance process has accelerated their onboarding time, offering clients a friction-free experience whilst meeting their compliance obligations.
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“There has been a positive change towards client onboarding. As a result, we have seen a significant improvement from a cost and time perspective.”
Deputy Money Laundering Officer & Head of Customer Due Diligence
Background
Knight Frank is one of the world’s largest residential and commercial property firms with a reputation for providing excellent, personable and dedicated client services. However, in a competitive market, they identified that they had to provide a fully compliant and seamless onboarding experience for clients to offer differentiated customer service truly.
Regulated firms, like Knight Frank, need to comply with stringent Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations and are required to complete in-depth Know Your Customer (KYC), Identity Verification (IDV) and Client Due Diligence (CDD) checks.
Key benefits
Helping Knight Frank to meet compliance regulations and onboard client much faster and safely.
Compliance intervention
Less compliance team intervention needed for efficient onboarding.
Streamlined sales approach
All compliance onboarding is now automated.
Better decision-making
Enabling faster, data-driven decision-making when onboarding.
The Challenge
Transform the client onboarding process and reduce costs
The Deputy Money Laundering Regulatory Officer (DMLRO) and Head of Customer Due Diligence at Knight Frank, wanted to transform their client onboarding process whilst also significantly reducing their compliance costs.
Previously, their sales team relied on a centralised onboarding and identity verification process, which, although compliant, proved to be time-consuming, subject to error and costly, negatively affecting the sales operations of their business.
As a result, a de-centralised CRM system was required, remote from their head office, to manage all client due diligence checks across their UK branches, making collecting, checking, and storing documents easier for auditing purposes.
How NorthRow Helped
Built a bespoke and single-point solution
After reviewing Knight Frank’s business challenges, NorthRow brought best-practice insight and knowledge to address the complex compliance and onboarding needs and built a bespoke and single-point solution.
They configured their SaaS platform to automate Knight Frank’s identity verification on individuals, including real-time address, ID document, PEPs and Sanctions checks. Knight Frank now only needs to input client information once. The single-point solution will check client data against multiple high-quality data sources in real-time, enabling the compliance team to make instant data-driven decisions about who they do business.
NorthRow’s solution met Knight Frank’s objectives perfectly, but it was the unexpected change in Knight Frank’s sales team’s approach to the new way of working that exceeded her expectations.
What Now?
70+ branches utilising automated onboarding
All compliance onboarding is now automated, with only the transactions that have been flagged for an enhanced client due diligence reviewed internally by the Knight Frank compliance team. Following this successful implementation across 70+ branches on the residential side of the business, Knight Frank has now turned to NorthRow once again, this time for the letting side, to complete the digital transformation across the whole business.
In summary, Knight Frank has reduced its client onboarding times, streamlined the compliance process and significantly reduced the cost of compliance with the added benefit of making the sales team approach a much more positive one, all thanks to NorthRow.
Testimonial
Head of Customer Due Diligence
70+
Different Knight Frank branches actively using the NorthRow solution
1896
Saw the foundation of Knight Frank and company recently celebrate their 125th anniversary
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Offices across 51 territories and over 16,000 employees
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Book your free demo of our comprehensive AML compliance solution today.