A new survey from digital customer experience (CX) solutions provider, TDCX, has found Know-Your-Customer (KYC) checks to be the top challenge facing almost half of fintech respondents.

The Rethinking Fintech Customer Experiences report from TDCX originated from a survey of 200 global senior fintech executives from September to October 2022 seeking to understand the latest CX challenges and strategies within the fintech space.

Survey responses also showed the KYC challenge not only affected the up-and-coming disruptors but even the most established fintechs, with 37 per cent of them also signalling their struggles with the lack of a globally uniform KYC standard.

The survey revealed fintechs with a business-to-customer focus found it more challenging than others to manage KYC standards (55 per cent), as complex onboarding processes hampered opportunities to build more customer relationships.

Only 21 per cent of fintechs said they use data analytics to support their KYC activities, sitting well behind using data for personalised marketing (55 per cent) and helping customers make financial decisions (40 per cent).

“KYC has become a key focus for fintech companies. Not only is KYC essential for regulatory compliance, it is an unavoidable part of the customer onboarding process which will either lead to a seamless customer experience or a highly frustrating one,” Ricart Valvekens, Chief Client Solutions Officer at TDCX, said.

“With the amount of required information for due diligence increasing exponentially over the past few years, fintechs are looking for ways to balance the need to provide their customers with speed and convenience while remaining compliant.

“While it is unsurprising that fintechs are dedicating more resources to revenue generating activities, it would be beneficial in the long run to leverage data analytics to enhance their KYC processes. We have also observed that more clients are looking for ways to drive business performance through transformative CX solutions.

“To that end, we recently launched our digital CX Center of Excellence to provide greater support to our clients. One of our goals is developing best practices in data science and analytics to help businesses enhance cost efficiency.”