Viska Digital Assets simplifies onboarding by taking due diligence digital.
An Introduction
When Viska Digital Assets launched in early 2022, it became the first institutional investment fund in Iceland to focus on cryptocurrencies. With a founder from a traditional finance background, the timing was perfect to seize the emerging opportunities in the cryptocurrency market. In 2019, Viska's CEO, Daði Kristjánsson, recognized that foreign bonds had lost their appeal due to constant money printing by central banks.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are appealing because they are designed as finite assets, with Bitcoin's total supply capped at 21 million (around 19 million are currently in circulation). This scarcity creates an intriguing market for an Icelandic company like Viska, with significant growth potential.
However, Kristjánsson understood that traditional due diligence was still necessary for new customers—a process he knew from experience could be tiresome and time-consuming for both parties. He realized there had to be a more efficient solution.
Launching with the right tools
Every new company is looking for the best options not only for growth but for managing the day-to-day work that can quickly become time-consuming for a growing team. Finding the best solutions to support an efficient and thorough workflow is arguably a big part of getting a business off the ground.
Gaining new customers is one thing, but in an industry like electronic coin investments, there are additional regulations and considerations that must be taken into account - which is performing proper due diligence on that potential customer during the onboarding process.
Being able to confidently exclude a customer from concerns such as political exposure and sanction lists is not only crucial to establishing clear knowledge of a customer (Know Your Customer - KYC), it is a legal requirement for companies dealing in financial services in order to better understand any potential risk factors for money laundering.
When Viska Digital Assets launched, Kristjánsson knew from experience that the manual filling in of paperwork involved in the anti-money (AML) laundering onboarding process of customers and the resulting workload of managing necessary data entry was an area he knew could be improved.
“...in my work in the financial market over time, I have performed due diligence on clients by having them fill out a paper form, which is much more difficult for all parties and greatly increases the risk of errors and mistakes."
This pushed him to look for options that were more streamlined and offered a better client experience. Digital was clearly the answer, not only due to the digital aspect of the Viska investments, but also in launching a company shortly following the covid-19 pandemic years.
The right solution would be fully electronic, would ensure the security and confidentiality of any information shared by a client and would allow Viska to offer an onboarding experience that quickly and accurately gathered critical details about new customers without the need for manual filing or data entry.
Secure and compliant digital solutions
A traditional, paper-based AML/KYC onboarding experience can be infamously long and can become quite complex and confusing for both the potential customer as well as the business handling the information after it has been submitted.
On top of the risk for human error, paper forms are fragile (easily destructible), can get a bit messy if corrections are needed (think strike-throughs or whiteout), and are at the mercy of the handlers to keep information found in those pages safe.
A digital form, on the other hand, should provide a clear process wherein a customer provides their details in an online portal with access restricted only to those invited through email and login measures. It should also make it clear for the customer what is required and how the data will be used in their application.
Viska digital assets were well aware of the importance of handling customer information efficiently, securely, and chose Taktikal as their solution.
“We are in a business that requires us to take good care of information about our customers. Taktikal's solution saves us time and makes our lives simpler.”
By implementing Taktikal SmartFlows, the Viska onboarding process was digital from the beginning. The features within SmartForms allowed them to build a custom onboarding process, white labeled for their own branding and customer comfort.
It also meant that they could now include the time-consuming parts of the due diligence process in a digital workflow that includes automatic checks in Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) databases as well as Sanctions lists.
Identity verification is an integral part of the onboarding experience and is handled confidently by two- or multi-factor authentication (2FA/MFA) measures that are also built-in to the SmartForms workflow.
In addition, SmartForms caters the questions to the individual answers, meaning that customers only provide information that is relevant to their particular case, eliminating repeat entering of details and ensuring that the necessary ones are gathered for the company.
Put simply, implementing the Taktikal solution in the Viska onboarding experience meant:
“Time saving and simplicity. The entire process can be completed with an electronic ID.”
By implementing a fully digital onboarding process that includes due diligence, Viska Digital Assets has been able to work with faster, more accurate, and more secure workflows from the first customer. The digitalization of this important step in the new customer process is not only helpful to the company, but appealing to new customers due to ease-of-use in keeping with the modern, electronic field of digital currency investment.