Verify vs Reliance onboarding

When your onboard a customer onto our platform, we need to take steps to verify their identity, confirm that their funds come from legitimate sources, and understand the level of financial crime risk they pose. As a UK bank, this is part of our regulatory duty to prevent financial crime.

There are two ways to onboard your customers with Griffin.

1. Verify. Verify is our in-house onboarding product. It lets you run all required Know Your Customer (KYC) and financial crime checks on your customers, determine their risk profile, and receive an automated onboarding decision in a matter of minutes.

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   If your company is not regulated, we require that you use Verify to onboard your customers.

2. Reliance onboarding. Reliance onboarding is only for regulated firms. In this model, you complete customer due diligence using your own tools and processes, and then send us the information we need. You must also attest that you have verified your customer’s identity in line with the standards set by the Joint Money Laundering Steering Group (JMLSG).

We’ll go into more detail on each onboarding method, but the key differences are shown in the table below.

	Verify	Reliance
Available to regulated or unregulated companies?	Both	Regulated only
Checks run by Griffin	All (see the full list below)	PEP and sanctions screenings, plus an Immigration Act check if necessary
Onboarding technology	Provided by Griffin	Any, provided it meets our criteria
Who conducts manual reviews?	Griffin	You and Griffin (we may run manual reviews as part of spot checks)
UI and API access	Both	API only
Control over your onboarding user interface	Mostly, but no control on biometrics	Full control
Integrations required	Verify only	Your own KYC tooling + our Reliance API (for sending basic customer data to Griffin)

Verify

Verify is our automated onboarding solution, allowing you to embed a full range of KYC, anti-money laundering, and anti-fraud checks into your product through a single integration. With Verify, Griffin runs all the checks and risk scoring on your customers, using workflows tailored to your sector.

Once checks are completed and the risk score has been calculated, Verify will automatically accept or decline the customer’s application. Edge cases will be referred for manual review, in which case we may have to contact you for more information about your customers.

Features

• Straightforward integration. Verify is an end-to-end onboarding solution, giving you access to all the checks you need via a single API. This means you don’t have to integrate with multiple providers to access business information lookup, ID&V checks, anti-fraud checks, sanctions screening, etc.
• Preset workflows. Our pre-configured workflows include all the checks you need to stay compliant and be confident that you are onboarding the right customers.
• Automated decisions. Once your customer has submitted all their information, a decision is returned within a matter of minutes.

Countries and customer types

Right now, Verify supports onboarding for limited companies, individuals, and sole traders based in the UK. It also supports onboarding of individuals and sole traders in the Crown Dependencies (Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man).

Checks

Verify includes the following checks.

Limited companies

• Business lookup and verification
• Directors and people with significant control (PSCs):
  • Identity document verification
  • Biometric verification
  • Sanctions screening
  • Politically Exposed Person (PEP) screening
  • Adverse media screening
  • Fraud checks

Individuals and sole traders

• Identity document verification
• Address verification
• Biometric verification
• Sanctions screening
• PEP screening
• Fraud checks

Reliance onboarding

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Reliance onboarding is for regulated firms only. To check if you are eligible, speak to a member of our team.

With Reliance onboarding, we rely on you to collect all necessary information on your customer and run all required checks and verifications before you onboard them onto our platform.

Once you have collected and verified your customer’s information, you must submit a short application to us on their behalf so we can run PEP and sanctions checks, plus an Immigration Act check if applicable. (Even if you have already run these checks, we run them again for every customer who holds money with us, in line with our financial crime prevention standards.)

You also must attest that you have verified your customer’s identity in line with JMLSG standards.

If you are using Reliance, we will periodically run assurance checks on your customer due diligence processes to make sure they meet our standards.

Countries and customer types

Right now, Reliance onboarding is available for limited companies, individuals, and sole traders based in the UK and the Crown Dependencies (Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man).