Cross-border client onboarding and monitoring
For companies serving global customers, the requirements for regulatory compliance have increased significantly in recent years. With customers in over 180 countries, Generali Global Corporate & Commercial (GC&C) needed to modernise and automate their client onboarding process with a manageable solution that would drive efficiencies and most importantly, be scalable globally.
The Generali Group is one of Europe’s largest insurance firms. Generali GC&C covers properties, casualty, engineering, marine, aviation, cyber, multinational program, captive and specialty risks and manages in excess of €150M in client revenue. While Compliance & Due Diligence has long been a priority for Generali GC&C, they could see that escalating regulations meant they needed a more scalable solution. So, in 2020, they started working with Dun & Bradstreet on a compliance automation solution. The aim was to combine client onboarding and sanctions screening into an automated workflow.
Shifting from manual and local to automated and global
Prior to 2020, GC&C had already implemented strict compliance standards across their global operations. Each country had a solution tailored to meet local needs and technologies. With regulations steadily increasing, it was clear that cost-effective improvements were needed. This led to GC&C developing a compliance automation solution they could scale in all their markets.
Unmasking beneficial ownership
As part of its master data processes, GC&C already used the Dun & Bradstreet D-U-N-S® Number to verify customer identities and enrich data records. D-U-N-S is a unique identifier that enables data for each entity to be matched and consolidated into a single, constantly-updated record. It also tracks the beneficial ownership structures of over 580 million entities, revealing apparent, hidden, and historical ownership globally.
This is an essential foundation for establishing Ultimate Beneficial Ownership (UBO) to the level required to meet regulations.
D-U-N-S, and the fact that Dun & Bradstreet owns, curates, and standardises the world’s largest source of business data, were the reasons GC&C chose them as their compliance data partner.
Fuelling risk engine performance
GC&C worked closely with Dun & Bradstreet to translate their ‘zero-tolerance’ approach to international sanctions risks into an automated workflow. Customers would be entered or uploaded into GC&C's risk engine and their identity and beneficial ownership would be automatically verified. They were then screened against international sanction lists and assessed against other risk parameters. Any that did not meet required compliance levels would trigger an alert for further investigation.
Before launching, GC&C worked closely with Dun & Bradstreet to calibrate and test the defined risk parameters to ensure accuracy, while minimising false-positives. The solution was then rolled out in each country with local training to ensure continuous compliance.
Unlocking efficiency and focus
Once implemented, GC&C was able to reduce the time taken for onboarding significantly – by days in some cases. This, multiplied by 25 countries, has freed up personnel across the entire process—from underwriting and operations to compliance and audit—allowing each team to focus on high-value tasks.
GC&C has introduced a compliance automation solution that can be scaled globally in a cost-effective manner. In addition, the compliance team benefits from a state-of-the-art risk management ecosystem.