Collaboration is key to Source of Funds compliance

Future focus – collaboration is key to Source of Funds compliance success

The hot topic of Source of Funds and Source of Wealth, continues apace. Regulators have made it clear that the requirement to provide sufficient source evidence as part of the client due diligence process is imperative.

All the firms that the team at Armalytix work with are clear in what they need:

• Reduce the time taken by clients to return Source of Funds information
• A process to readily highlight risk in transactions and at an earlier point
• A more efficient internal approval process

Key to helping make this happen is a keen drive from the Armalytix team to embed themselves into the firms that they work with. Most recently, the team have been shortlisted for a collaboration award with O Neill Patient Solicitors LLP(ONP) in the British Conveyancing Awards.

Source of Funds that works with your CMS

A collaboration project that has been fruitful and full of innovation, both parties spent several months working closely together to achieve a Source of Funds process that was not only water tight and compliant, but had an ‘API first’ approach.

ONP’s CMS is VisualFiles – it was a key requirement that Armalytix worked seamlessly with the technology.

Creating a robust process in house was key. ONP and Armalytix worked together to build a customised SOF questionnaire in the Armalytix journey which was based upon the foundations of ONP’s previous manual process. Talk about moving manual to digital.

The full integration between Armalytix and ONP’s CMS Visual Files has played a crucial role. It has meant that:

• There is an SOF approval process within Visual Files.
• The report is returned into Visual Files from Armalytix.
• ONP take some structured data from the Armalytix report to ‘red flag’* a file in VisualFiles where necessary which alerts fee earners to key AML risks earlier.

ONP have now fully rolled out Armalytix across their business meaning that all departments now benefit from fully integrated Source of Funds information gathering.

Over half of reports returned within 48 hours

The project has seen the ONP average time to complete the Source of Funds collection and approval process go down from 45 days down to 11, whilst 58% of reports are returned within the first 48 hours.

Working closely together was crucial to the collaborations’ success, weekly meetings with key project leaders from both parties, Paul Egan at ONP and Tom Lyes from Armalytix, meant that the API integration was executed impeccably by both technology teams, Abigail Booth Head of Applications at ONP said:

‘Working with Armalytix felt like an extension of our team here at O’Neill Patient. We had regular meetings as part of our working group, which Armalytix attended and contributed to, making the process run smoothly whilst providing guidance and information on our processes as we built them out.’

Collaboration means constant monitoring

At every turn peer reviews were held with stakeholders, including vigorous testing and pilot groups with key fee earners Tom White and Suzanne Innocent providing valuable feedback before roll out.

A really good example of how this worked well is the bespoke questionnaire which now sits as an integral part of the integration.

Armalytix continue to develop, nurture and engage with all clients and ONP attended their November innovation day held by the Armalytix tech team to gain more feedback and remain as agile as possible in this ever changing landscape.

Helping a firm to embed the SOF process into its culture is part of every project and Armalytix produced custom training resources for ONPs dedicated training team. This was to support a train the trainer approach.

The purpose of training is twofold; it helped ONP understand the new process and secondly it ensures all users fully understand the Armalytix reports meaning they can feel confident in the part it plays in the compliance process.

Will Britton, Continuous Improvement practitioner at ONP said;

As part of our onboarding of the Armalytix digital source of funds solution, training delivery was a key reason for its success. Once the core system was built between Armalytix and ONP, our dedicated training team were upskilled alongside the creation of our training materials. The training was designed to fit our hybrid workers whereby face to face and remote delivery was catered for. Each member of the operational teams joined a training session where a representative from Armalytix was also on hand to ensure that all client facing team members were equipped to handle the new processes at the point we started our live pilot. Using vital feedback from the pilot enabled process tweaks to be made ahead of final training delivery being rolled out in the same format. This led to knowledgeable team members that are confident with talking through the new processes with our clients on a day to day basis.

The result of this hard work and bringing together of technology has seen:

• A better digital relationship with clients. Less friction.
• Reduced costs, more time spent on legal work and client communication.
• Positive feedback from referrers and all users across the business

Becoming form free for firms is a reality. Leveraging open banking technology combined with other data sources can transform how law firms request, prepare and verify their clients’ financial information. Ultimately moving towards a data informed paperless and time saving future is the Armalytix team’s hope to solving the issue of proof in the digital economy.

Book a demo

Armalytix enables law firms to create great client experiences with a simple, digital journey integrated effortlessly into your existing workflows.

Book a time for a demo to see Armalytix in more detail. We’ll also run through how can use the reports as part of your risk-based approach to identifying, assessing, understanding, and mitigating money laundering threats.

You can also download a sample source of funds report at this link.