Societe Generale uses the KYC Registry by SWIFT

Financial institutions’ efforts to comply with KYC (know your customer) regulatory requirements are both costly and time-consuming.

This led SWIFT to develop the KYC registry tools, which now boasts more than 3,600 participating banking institutions around the world.

Since 2013, Societe Generale has been involved in the user group which has contributed to establish the list of data and documents on the KYC registry.

The main purpose of the KYC registry is to provide a single standard for KYC data exchanges between banks. Each bank feeds its own KYC data into the same registry which can then be consulted by other participating institutions.

SWIFT not only manages the KYC registry. It also carries out quality control checks on the answers provided, keeping in mind that the banks themselves are responsible for the information they give.

Since the end 2016, the Correspondent Banking Compliance team from Societe Generale began gradually the roll out of the KYC registry in the entities of the Group (i.e. 80 prioritised entities, so far).

The KYC registry is now an official source of document collection in the various core businesses around the group. SWIFT and the Correspondent Banking Compliance team from Societe Generale provide training for the KYC analysts from the various core businesses, in line with the document collection needed to compile the KYC files for initiating relations or renewal.

The next version of the KYC registry is due for release at the end of 2017. The new version will be considerably more comprehensive (with the number of questions increasing from 150 to 350), and will include the new Wolfsberg survey, which is also due for the end of the year.

Once critical mass has been reached in terms of contributions from the world’s banking institutions, the KYC registry will substitute much of the bilateral document exchanges between banks and replace many of the ad hoc surveys used by banks as part of enhanced due diligence. Societe Generale is underway to contribute significantly to this objective.