High Risk Customers

Regulated businesses, including financial institutions, are obligated to undertake customer due diligence (CDD) and continuing monitoring from a risk-based perspective. Businesses must identify high-risk clients and implement enhanced due diligence (EDD) procedures in order to stop fraud, financing of terrorism, and money laundering.

Everything you need to know about high-risk consumer categories and the ones you should be on the lookout for will be covered in this article. However, before we proceed, let’s define precisely what we mean by “high-risk customers.”

What Are High Risk Customers?

Customers at high risk are those who may one day pose a danger to your business. The hazard is frequently connected to cybersecurity, fraud, or compliance difficulties in the online environment.

A dangerous user may be someone who is propensity to: hijack another user’s account use a stolen credit card attempt to acquire corporate information borrow money with the goal of defaulting sign up using stolen IDs

The key, of course, is for businesses to have a clear understanding of where risk sits within their industry, for example, by employing risk management software or going through a fraud risk assessment checklist.

What Is Considered a High-Risk Customer in Banking?

Regulations, particularly those pertaining to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and anti-money laundering (AML), determine the majority of what qualifies as a high-risk banking customer. This could comprise:

People who are politically exposed can be found on PEP lists. They are those who have a higher propensity for engaging in bribery or corruption. These people frequently occupy executive or judicial positions in the government.
Citizens of sanctioned nations: Making sure you don’t conduct business with people from prohibited nations is another AML requirement. Government personnel maintain the listings, which might change from one nation to the next.
This is a KYC requirement for identity thieves to make sure you can confirm your customers’ identities. To put it another way, everyone who creates an account using false information is high risk since they are committing identity fraud.
MSBs (money service businesses): Companies may be clients of banks. Additionally, some businesses are high-risk because they engage with cash transactions. They are more susceptible to money laundering as a result.

How Do High Risk Customers Impact Banks?

Compliance fines are one of the major problems that banks have when working with high-risk clients. Compliance penalties may be severe and harm the standing of your bank.

Onboarding individuals who could try to take advantage of your financial institution is also a problem. Higher chargeback rates and acquisition costs, defaulting loan customers hurting your bottom line, account takeovers where fraudsters take over your current customers’ accounts hurting your reputation and potentially your finances, data leaks hurting your reputation and putting you at risk of regulatory action, and so on are some possible outcomes.

How to Detect High Risk Customers in Banking

When it comes to the instruments that banks and financial institutions use to detect risk, the following are available:

programme for verifying one’s identity

Solutions for AML risk identification, fraud prevention, and transaction monitoring

These can be built in-house or by third-party providers.

It’s also crucial to consider how the items you choose to meet these demands stack up and combine with one another. Although an end-to-end solution for all of the above may be available at times, most neobanks and other types of banks are likely to install multiple products to guarantee efficient fraud prevention, compliance, and security.

Know Your Customer (KYC) Risk Rating

Know Your Customer (KYC) is a critical procedure that businesses use to confirm the legitimacy of their customers and to adhere to legal specifications, rules, and regulations. This aids financial institutions in identifying high-risk clients and safeguarding their operations against fraud.

Organisations use the KYC risk assessment as a crucial tool to assess the potential risk of money laundering posed by a certain consumer. By doing this, businesses may protect their brand and financial stability and guarantee that they don’t do business with people or organisations engaged in financial crimes like money laundering or funding terrorism.

Risk Rating Process

Financial organisations employ a procedure called customer risk rating to assess the degree of money laundering risk posed by a certain client. Data gathering, analysis, and verification are a few of the procedures that make up the rating system.

The institution begins by gathering details about the client, such as name, date of birth, address, and proof of identity. Additionally, they compile information on the customer’s past transactions, the sort of account they have, and the character of their commercial endeavours.

The institution conducts a risk assessment after gathering the data to determine the customer’s potential risk of money laundering. This include looking into the customer’s past transactions, professional connections, and other elements that might point to irregularities.

The consumer is awarded a risk rating based on the study, which might vary from low to high. Customers with a low risk rating are thought to be less likely to engage in money laundering operations, whilst those with a high risk rating are seen to be more likely to engage in suspicious activities.

The customer risk rating system is crucial in assisting financial institutions in meeting regulatory requirements and detecting possible problems. It allows financial institutions to identify high-risk consumers and take appropriate steps to avoid money laundering, terrorist funding, and other fraudulent acts. Financial organisations may make better judgements and protect their reputation and financial health by knowing how the Customer risk rating system works.