Best Reference Data Newcomer (Vendor or Product): Clarient Global

Clarient Global enables customers to outsource sourcing and maintenance of know-your-customer (KYC) data, which has become increasingly complex in a tightly regulated market where there is a need for firms to collect an ever-growing amount of documentary evidence. As part of the service, Clarient Global sources necessary documents in the public domain to support clients’ onboarding processes and client reviews. Users are not only presented with the documents, but can view the audit trails to the original sources. The service, which has already seen significant uptake, is offered via the Clarient Entity Hub—a utility leveraging Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation data capabilities and a dedicated operations team that is powered by a library of around two million legal entity records from Avox.

Judges called it a “strong offering from a trusted source”, which “addresses a growing need” for KYC information, and the statistics are also impossible to overlook. Clarient Global has signed more than 100 clients, including asset managers, hedge funds, corporates, banks and broker-dealers, and the Public KYC Service currently has over 20,000 public entities, while an average of 350 additional public records are completed each day.

In addition, there are more than 65,000 validated KYC documents on the service, highlighting the scale of the challenge and the problems firms are presented with to comply with stringent KYC processes. The number of documents to collect supports a point made by judges that “KYC is always a challenge”, and underlines how this service helps solve an immediate data issue.