Tide Bank: The Journey to Automated KYC

Tide Bank’s Back Office Was a Bottleneck for Growth

Tide Bank, a premier financial platform for small and medium-sized businesses in the UK, faced a significant bottleneck for growth due to a backlog of KYC (Know Your Customer) requests and other back office inefficiencies. The manual processing of these checks not only slowed down new account applications but also strained their operational resources. To alleviate this bottleneck and support their growth ambitions, Tide Bank needed to build an AI-powered solution to automate the majority of KYC checks. This strategic decision would in turn streamlined their onboarding process, enhanced operational efficiency, and position Tide Bank for scalable growth while improving the overall customer experience.

How We Achieved It

The project began with an in-depth understanding of Tide Bank’s vision, goals, and operations. Although the primary objective was to source talent and execute on their strategic objectives, the involvement of multiple stakeholders required a structured approach to ensure satisfaction for all parties. Early-stage workshops were conducted to align communication and clearly define requirements, focusing on seamless communication and easy access to information and materials.

These workshops allowed the team to gain a deeper understanding of Tide Bank’s business strategy and better address the challenges, providing a tailored solution. Emphasis was placed on sourcing talent within the European Union and delivering a fast-to-market solution that complied with strict regulations. We utilized cutting-edge tech stack, like Python, Kafka, Spark, to build the necessary technology that would help alleviate the workload for the Credit and Fraud departments.

By the end of development, the KYC software reduced the manual back office checks from 74% to below 30% allowing for better accuracy and cost savings. The platform self-learns and improves over time via Machine Learning

Key Features: 

• Automated id checks

• document/image recognition & validation

• automated cross-checks with company house, Interpol and other institutions