UK Tax Returns gets rid of paperwork and integrates online KYC without coding
Jose Baptista
Partner UK Tax Return
GetID’s interface is simple and straightforward: a good balance of simplicity and complexity. It is great for both the developer and the person who knows very little.
Case and History
UK Tax Returns is a tax advisory firm from the UK. Thе company provides highly qualified assistance to property owners in the UK and also helps people leaving or returning to the UK to resolve tax issues relating to residence status.
Almost 80% of its clients are based in the Middle East, Singapore, Hong Kong and other countries. They are private investors who buy property in the UK. They are required to file their tax returns correctly and on time. And if possible, they will be happy to refund overpaid taxes. UK Tax Returns takes care of the bulk of this process.
Since the tax advisory services in the UK are heavily regulated, UKTR has to align with the regulatory requirements. AML’s main regulator in the UK is HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the independent department of the UK government responsible for collecting taxes, paying some forms of public support and administering the regulatory regime). It prepares regulations according to the risk areas in which companies are located. UKTR is identified as a high-risk service because most of its clients are based overseas and there are no “face-to-face” meetings with them. This is why it is incumbent on the company to follow AML requirements as closely as possible and to be sure that identification procedures are effective. UK Tax Returns also follows the ATT (Association of Tax Technicians) guidelines and principles.
Before automation, the process worked as follows: clients certified copies of documents, uploaded or emailed them to UKTR. The UKTR team would then manually verify them and send a decision to the client. For high-risk individuals, there was an additional verification through a special programme that confirmed that the ID Document was a valid document, but UKTR didn’t have a way to confirm the liveness of an individual.
Challenges
Аutomated verification process full AML compliance from HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs).
Process and Results
Several reasons prompted UK Tax Returns to introduce an automated customer identification solution. The main one is to make the onboarding process more streamlined, saving customers a significant amounts of time. And this could be done by eliminating the need for customers to go and certify copies of documents and then wait for a decision from the company.
Also, UKTR had a specific requirement – the company needed to check different types of ID documents from different countries and to have comprehensive access to up-to-date global watchlists. However, the company doesn’t have a separate IT and technical team. The company started exploring different [identity verification] software solutions. Some of the offers didn’t provide all the necessary functionality, the others could cost several times more, some of them required writing code for solution implementation. As a result, UKTR decided to partner up with GetID as it was able to offer the needed set of technical features and seamless integration.
“We were positively surprised that we didn’t have to develop the front-end ourselves, and the interaction with GetID was great because it gave UK Tax Returns exactly the solution we needed”, said Jose Baptista.
Thanks to GetID, the entire procedure is now much faster. For the company, the time of the automatic verification procedure has been reduced by 25%, and the whole process is much more comfortable for its customers. The entire procedure can now be completed in a few minutes, whereas previously it could take an entire day to prepare the documents.
The team calls liveness test a favourite service provided by GetID. It is what helps to meet the strict criteria when dealing with foreign individuals, while also significantly reducing onboarding time for the client themselves.
“It’s great that AML screening has been integrated seamlessly with ID document verification and the overall workflow,” says the company. It used to be a separate process that was a lot of hassle for the company, but now the client is screened in seconds, with no extra steps required.
Results
The process is much faster and fully compliant with regulatory requirements.
It is commonly thought that integrating automatic user identification is a difficult process, requiring the involvement of professional programming teams. This used to be the case, but now things have changed. That is exactly what UK Tax Returns has made sure of. Thanks to the solution the GetID experts are working on, any team will be able to easily set up, work through the rather complex identity verification process and Integrate it into their system, without the need to involve a separate IT team.
“GetID’s interface is simple and straightforward: a good balance of simplicity and complexity. It is great for both the developer and the person who knows very little”, the company summarised.
Jose Baptista
Partner UK Tax Return
What’s also of great consequence and something which we cannot measure is the time saving for our client. As a business that has a very client-centric focus we’re always striving to make the engagement process and ongoing compliance as frictionless as possible.
Features
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ID documents verification
document validity and authenticity -
GetID administrative portal
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AML watchlists screening
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KYC flow builder
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Liveness test
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Integrations:
Web SDK
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Integration process:
4 weeks
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