At the recent Hubbis Vietnam Wealth Management Forum, Jordan Lo, Head of APAC at Swiss-based RegTech firm IMTF, presented a deep dive into how modern regulatory technology, dynamic Know Your Customer (KYC) processes, and artificial intelligence (AI) are reshaping the compliance landscape for wealth managers. In his detailed presentation, Jordan outlined IMTF’s multi-layered approach, which not only enhances compliance but also drives business growth by boosting client satisfaction and loyalty. He shared actionable insights, especially from IMTF’s work with DBS Bank in Singapore, explaining how such systems improve efficiency, reduce costs, and elevate customer experiences and boost loyalty.
Building a Strong Foundation in Compliance
Jordan began by providing background on IMTF, a Swiss firm with a 35-year history in regulatory technology. Known for its extensive compliance expertise, IMTF has a substantial global client base, including major banks and wealth managers in ASEAN, Europe, and Africa. He explained that IMTF’s solutions operate both in the cloud and on-premise, allowing banks to scale their compliance operations with ease. The 2022 acquisition of the Siron compliance suite further bolstered IMTF’s position, particularly in anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing.
IMTF’s services span across different banking sectors, but as Jordan noted, “We are particularly strong in wealth management and private banking,” particularly given their Swiss heritage. Their clientele includes global banks, insurance companies, and corporates, reflecting how regulatory oversight now applies broadly across sectors. “We don’t just meet regulatory requirements,” he explained, “we drive innovation that aligns with regulatory compliance while enhancing business growth.”
Integrating Compliance Modules for Real-Time Risk Assessment
Jordan then discussed IMTF’s modular compliance approach, explaining that by using a combination of modules—such as transaction monitoring, name screening, risk scoring, and alert management—banks can build a system that aligns with their unique operational needs. Highlighting DBS as an example, he explained how IMTF integrated KYC reviews, onboarding processes, and risk scoring directly into DBS’s systems to create a comprehensive compliance network. This integration allows for a “holistic view of the customer,” with unified data access for client risk ratings, suitability, transactions, and behavioural patterns.
The system’s integration capabilities, particularly for name screening and risk orchestration, enable IMTF to work seamlessly with existing core banking systems and transaction monitoring platforms. This helps banks reduce turnaround times and onboard clients more efficiently. IMTF’s solution also includes a “Household” model, which, as seen with DBS, captures relationships and entity structures across multiple accounts within a family or business group. This not only streamlines KYC but also simplifies compliance monitoring across complex, high-net-worth households.
Dynamic KYC: Moving from Scheduled to Continuous Monitoring
In a significant departure from traditional periodic reviews, IMTF’s dynamic KYC system empowers banks to assess client risk in real time. “We’ve shifted away from the usual 1-, 2-, or 3-year review cycles,” Jordan said, explaining that IMTF’s platform recalculates risk based on the latest behavioural and transaction data, triggering KYC reviews only when necessary. This proactive approach has reduced the volume of KYC cases substantially for our customers, easing the workload on compliance officers without sacrificing regulatory rigor. Jordan noted, “Regulators appreciate this model because it’s an example of taking initiative rather than relying solely on compliance timelines.”
He further explained how dynamic KYC incorporates real-time inputs from systems such as Singapore’s COSMIC platform, which enables collaborative sharing of anti-money laundering data across banks. These collaborative initiatives support IMTF’s platform in detecting suspicious activity, and allow for ad-hoc KYC reviews based on shared intelligence.
AI-Driven Adverse Media Screening
Jordan also highlighted IMTF’s AI-driven adverse media screening module, a critical component for risk evaluation in wealth management. This tool retrieves and summarises news articles related to clients, using AI to determine relevance. “The summarised articles save relationship managers significant time,” he noted, allowing compliance officers to quickly assess if media reports impact client risk. He mentioned that this module has been highly successful, with IMTF’s generative AI tools providing accurate summaries that improve client screening efficiency.
Additionally, IMTF employs Qualification AI to “pre-qualify” articles, proposing to relationship managers whether each news item is relevant. IMTF’s platform allows the integration of such AI technologies to realise the efficiency benefits. Jordan candidly noted that AI technology, while powerful, still requires testing to mitigate “AI hallucination” errors, ensuring that automated results maintain high accuracy.
Machine Learning for Enhanced Risk Monitoring
IMTF’s platform goes beyond basic compliance by applying machine learning to detect outliers and behavioural anomalies in transactions. Jordan explained that, alongside traditional transaction monitoring scores, machine learning offers an additional risk score based on deviations from clusters. “This allows compliance officers to understand when a transaction behaviour significantly deviates from the norm for that client profile,” he elaborated, underscoring how this dual scoring approach, empowers wealth managers to spot irregularities more effectively.
Cost-Effectiveness for Emerging Markets
Closing the talk Jordan addressed concerns on costs, particularly relevant for Vietnamese clients. He stressed that IMTF’s solutions offer a low total cost of ownership and represent a sensible investment.
“Our software is highly configurable and standardised,” he explained, adding that IMTF’s modular structure allows banks to adopt only the necessary features without incurring excessive costs. He urged Vietnamese banks to consider IMTF’s solutions as scalable and maintainable long-term investments that can support both compliance and growth.
IMTF also facilitates a user group for Siron clients, where participants can share insights and discuss how they leverage IMTF’s tools for compliance challenges, creating a collaborative knowledge-sharing network among clients.
Insights to IMTF and the Modular Suite of RegTech Solutions Designed for Today’s World of Wealth Management
Founded in 1987, IMTF is an international software and RegTech company headquartered in Switzerland with offices worldwide, such as in Singapore, to meet the demands of its growing client base in Asia. The company offers innovative compliance and process automation software solutions which enable clients to increase efficiency, achieving significant cost reductions with assured compliance.
IMTF today has a complete and integrated set of modules across compliance and customer lifecycle management. Its RegTech platform offers unrivalled precision and efficiency. IMTF promotes its modular approach as unique in its field and offers Financial Institutions (FIs) many different platform onboarding possibilities.
The firm now has some 36 years of experience under its belt, with broad expertise in compliance, that began with AML solutions in Europe (AML transaction monitoring, Name Screening, sanction screening, risk evaluation) and is now covering end-to-end Client Lifecycle Management software solutions such as automated KYC, Onboarding and reviews enabling business transformation and achieving regulatory compliance and efficient operations.
IMTF’s world-class software modules are quick to configure and integrate with existing systems. They are based on advanced analytics, machine learning and combine an array of relevant algorithms for more precision and efficiency. That includes the automation and digitisation of Client Onboarding in complex environments such as Wealth Management and Corporate Banking.
IMTF's ICOS/2 solution
Onboarding is a major pain point, and IMTF’s tools are designed to fully automate this process, remove the paper, remove the manual pain points, guide all stakeholders and result in efficient client onboarding and client satisfaction.
IMTF's onboarding platform (ICOS/2) addresses all the FI clients' different journeys on all channels and devices. The data captured during onboarding is consistent, granular, relevant and of high quality.
Furthermore, business & compliance rules are applied in real-time to the data being collected to guide the RM/client advisor (or the client in self-service) with dynamic questionnaires through a personalised onboarding journey. ICOS/2 comes with "out-of-the-box" processes that can be tailored graphically and customised quickly without programming (no code).
The integrated, automated KYC including advanced name screening and granular risk rating, may be extended with smart, semantic and federated background searches across various data sources. IMTF’s semantic search technology automates the highly manual process of open source ‘googling’ regarding source-of-wealth or adverse media. A “smart view” guides relationship managers and compliance officers to the most relevant text snippets and removes the need to read entire documents. So, assessment and qualification are accelerated and much safer.
The overall effectiveness of IMTF’s solutions results in dramatically faster onboarding, and remarkably more accurate and compliant outcomes. Eliminating false positives is a key element.
Amongst notable developments in recent years, in late 2022, IMTF acquired the Siron® anti-money laundering and compliance solutions from US-based FICO Corporation, a leading provider of analytical business intelligence software. With this acquisition, IMTF now assumes the global operations of all Siron anti-financial crime solutions. IMTF had been a Siron partner for over 20 years and, with that acquisition, became the world's leading provider of AML and compliance solutions.
IMTF today serves clients in more than 80 countries from its headquarters in Givisiez, Switzerland and through its eight subsidiaries in Europe, the Middle East, India and the APAC region. Combined with the FICO deal, IMTF is now an established and well-recognised world leader in compliance and process automation, with more than 1,500 banking and insurance customers and with over 300 professionals across all of its operations.
