KYB and Identity

What is KYB?

Know Your Business is a process that financial institutions are legally obligated to run. It consists of a series of checks on companies before conducting business with them to avoid companies involved in money laundering, fraud, or other crimes.

What does a KYB product do?

A KYB product needs to accomplish these 5 tasks:

1. Verify the identity of the business

Does the business have a valid filing and valid standing with the secretary of state (SoS)?

Do the business registration filings provided by the customer align with what’s listed on the state registries?

Is the EIN provided by the business valid?

2. Identify and verify the beneficial owners of the company:

Who are the associated people listed on the registration filings?

Do the associated people provided by the customer align on with what’s listed on the registration filings?

3. Ensure that a business does not conduct activities in any risky industries.

4. Scan business entities and their owners/associated people against OFAC watchlists.

5. Verify the owners and associated people for KYC.

What is Enigma KYB?

Enigma'a KYB endpoint delivers key information required to complete the KYB process, including identity information, registrations filings, risky activities, and OFAC attributes. The KYB endpoint is designed to maximize registration fill rates due to its unique ability to blend operating names and addresses, legal names and addresses, websites and additional identity information, providing multiple ways to surface a registration filing and multiple ways of uncovering potential Ultimate Beneficial Owners for OFAC screening.

Enigma is able to successfully resolve operating names and addresses with legal names and addresses because of its proprietary data sets, including 40% of card transactions in the country, and its Entity Resolution systems tying websites, legal entity information, and operating information together.

How Does Enigma's KYB product work?

This endpoint accepts as inputs for matching: up to two business names, up to two addresses, one person name, and one website. It optionally accepts up to four persons to screen. Enigma's KYB solution is unique in its ability to query across operating names and addresses, legal names and addresses, and websites, resulting in industry-leading registration fill rates. Enigma's KYB endpoint returns:

Legal entity consisting of Secretary of State Registration Information including legal names, addresses, people, registering agents, incorporation date.
Operating names and addresses where available
Websites
Industries
Risky activities
OFAC watchlist screens
- Watchlist screens are done on persons_to_screen object, any associated people on the registration filing, and the business name.
- Watchlist entities are draw from the following publications of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC):
- Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN)
- Consolidated Sanctions List (Non-SDN)
Four risk flags
1) Watchlist risk: if any business name or person name, either inputted by the user or surfaced by a registration, is similar enough to one appearing on the sanctions list, this risk will be labeled “high”, otherwise “low”.
2) Legal entity existence risk: if a registration filing cannot be surfaced, this risk will be labeled “high”, otherwise “low”.
3) High-risk activities: if any risky activity is surfaced, this will be labeled “high”, otherwise “low. The full list of risky activities is described below:
4) Overall risk: if any watchlist, legal entity existence, or risky activity risk is flagged, this will be “high”; otherwise “low”.

Match precision is held by default at approximately a >95% threshold and can be customized to be higher or lower using the match confidence score.

Packages

Depending on your use case, you may use one of three packages detailed in the KYB-Specific Attributes and Objects page.

Other notes

Registrations and legal entity attributes used for the KYB and Identity Use Case differ from Enigma's Registrations attribute, which is exclusively used for Sales and Marketing use cases. Read each attribute page to learn more.