Digital compliance specialist SmartSearch has recently become one of only two providers in the UK to offer triple-bureau reliability. This means it now uses the data from three credit reference agencies within its award-winning anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) platform, securing its position as ‘the gold standard of AML & KYC’.
In this Whitepaper we will explore what this update means how it has been achieved, and why it is so important.
When AML and compliance firms talk about ‘dual bureau’ and ‘triple bureau’ the bureau part refers to the credit reference agency whose data is being used to run checks on individuals and businesses.
Credit reference agencies (CRAs) are independent organisations that hold information on consumers, including their name, current address and previous addresses from the past six years and if they are registered on the electoral roll. They also hold financial information, including how many accounts they’ve had in the past six years, and when they were opened, details on payment history – regular payments, any missed or late payments, how much credit is available to the individual and how much of it they use, as well as anyone they are financially associated with for example, a joint mortgage. It will also hold information on any defaults, CCJs, IVAs or bankruptcies in the past six years.
To hold this data and keep it up to date, CRAs securely collect information from public records and other businesses and organisations such as banks, credit card providers, utility suppliers and mobile phone companies.
There are three main credit reference agencies - Experian, Equifax and TransUnion – together they are known as the ‘Big Three’.
1. Experian is a multinational global data analytics and consumer credit referencing company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. Experian operates in 37 countries and collects and aggregates information on more than 1 billion people and businesses worldwide. Experian is probably the most well-known CRA in the UK because, as well as working with businesses, it also sells credit monitoring services directly to UK consumers.
2. Equifax is a multinational consumer credit reporting agency headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Equifax operates across 24 countries and collects and aggregates information on over 800 million individual consumers and more than 88 million businesses worldwide. Like Equifax it also credit monitoring and fraud prevention services directly to consumers.
3. TransUnion is also US based. It operates in more than 30 countries across the globe, collecting and aggregating information on more than a billion individual consumers and more than 65,000 businesses.
Triple bureau does exactly what it says on the tin – it utilises data from three CRAs as opposed to relying on the data of one or two. This is important because, while Experian, Equifax and TransUnion are all leading global CRAs, the information reported to each can be different, as can the creditors that are reporting that data.
Most AML solutions only source their verification data from one or two CRAs, and while two is better than one, three is definitely better than two; any compliance solution that is only gathering data from one or two CRAs could be missing out on important information.
Prior to becoming a triple bureau provider, SmartSearch was operating as a dual bureau provider. Its services were powered by Equifax and Experian, and by utilising the data from the largest of the two CRAs, SmartSearch was able to offer a market-leading match and pass rate of 97%.
As part of the platform upgrade, SmartSearch now takes additional data from TransUnion, creating one of the only triple-bureau compliance solutions in the UK.
There is one other provider that takes data from all three, but SmartSearch’s unrivalled technology, capacity and data configuration means it is the only provider currently able to achieve a match rate of up to 97%.
This market-leading rate offers clients a much more granular approach, as search configurations can be tailored to each data provider and get a much more comprehensive view. This not only reduces errors but ensures clients don’t waste time and money running enhanced due diligence on false positives.