CLIENT ONBOARDING
Onboard corporate clients, individual clients and business partners through dedicated workflows. Record the shareholders, directors, officers and signatories behind each company in a single entity record, apply the classifications your onboarding policy requires and keep supporting documents with the client they relate to.
First Compliance customer onboarding software holds the records your team builds when it takes on a new client or business partner. Its primary value is structure: each record is captured in a format designed for its type, so your team does not have to force a company, a person and a business partner into the same form.
Onboard corporate clients, individual clients and business partners through separate sections designed for each type of record.
Record company and business information alongside shareholders, directors, management, the company secretary, the registered agent and authorised signatories.
Define the entity types, legal statuses, shareholder categories and client types that your onboarding policy uses.
Upload multiple corporate or individual records at once, and view the changes made to corporate entity records over time.
The value of a customer onboarding tool lies in how faithfully it records each client and how easily your team can find that information later, and in how well it fits your data, systems and security requirements. The benefits below cover both.
Every onboarding policy describes clients in its own terms. A corporate service provider may distinguish between several share classes and sub-shareholdings, while a bank may need finer distinctions between legal statuses. Configurable classifications let your team apply the categories your policy defines, so that records stay consistent from one reviewer to the next.
Moving to a new platform starts with the records you already hold. Entity Bulk Upload and Client Bulk Upload let you bring multiple corporate and individual records across in one upload, instead of re-keying each client by hand.
Bank details, due diligence information and supporting documents each have a dedicated section within the corporate entity record. A reviewer who opens the file finds them alongside the ownership and management details they support, rather than in a shared drive.
An individual client, a holding company and a business partner do not share the same information requirements. Dedicated workflows mean each record collects the information relevant to its type, and business partner records are kept in their own section rather than mixed in with your clients.
Onboarding records hold identity documents, ownership details and bank information that must be protected and, in some jurisdictions, stored locally. First Compliance can be deployed on-premises or hosted in your own region, with encryption, access controls and regular backups protecting every client record. The platform is certified to ISO 27001:2022 for information security and ISO 9001:2015 for quality management.
Customer onboarding in First Compliance follows six steps, from choosing the onboarding workflow to keeping the completed record up to date. The steps describe the functions available at each stage, and your team can complete the sections in the order your procedures require.
Decide whether the relationship is with a corporate client, an individual client or a business partner, and open the relevant section. Each workflow presents the fields that apply to that type of record.
Add a single record through Entity Management or Client Management, or upload several records at once. For corporate entities, download the template and structure your data before you submit it.
For a corporate client, complete the shareholder, director, management, company secretary, registered agent and authorised signatory sections. Shareholders can be recorded by share type, share class and shareholding type, and each manager can be given a designation.
Assign the entity type, legal status, client type, residency status and associated-party categories your team has configured, so that every record is described in the same terms.
Record the client’s bank details and due diligence information, and upload the supporting documents that evidence what the record contains.
Open the KYC function and Profile Screening from the corporate entity interface. As the client changes over time, Historical Changes shows how the record has been updated since onboarding.
Explore the onboarding capabilities that support customer due diligence, from verifying who a customer is to understanding who owns a company and managing higher-risk relationships.
Collect and assess the information needed to complete customer due diligence.
Enable customers to initiate the KYC process through a secure link and submit the required information remotely.
Verify that a business exists and understand who runs it.
Identify the individuals who ultimately own or control a legal person.
Visualise layered corporate ownership to see where control sits.
Confirm that individuals are who they claim to be.
Confirm that a real person is present during remote onboarding.
Check identity and corporate documents for signs that they are not authentic.
Apply additional measures to higher-risk customers and relationships.
Vet employees, agents and contractors before granting them access.
Four capabilities support the onboarding workflow described above. Each one is set out below with the features that make it work in practice.
An onboarding form that holds only a company’s name, its licence and a list of people cannot show how the company is controlled. First Compliance gives each party connected to a corporate client its own section, so the record shows who owns the company, who manages it and who can act on its behalf.
Classifications are defined in the module’s configuration settings rather than fixed in advance, so the categories in the platform match the ones in your onboarding policy.
Bulk uploads suit migrations from a previous system, onboarding batches and records handed over by a sales or relationship team. Because the process is the same each time, it is easier to train staff and to evidence the work.
Supporting information, a history of changes and access to related compliance checks all sit within the corporate entity record.
Different members of a compliance function use the onboarding module for different tasks. Find the description that matches your responsibilities.
Understand how client records are structured and classified, and what information reviewers rely on when they assess a new relationship.
Build corporate and individual client records, complete the associated-party sections and open KYC and Profile Screening from the same interface.
Maintain shareholder, director, company secretary, registered agent and signatory details for the companies your firm administers.
Bring existing client records into the platform through bulk uploads and keep supporting documents with each record.
Customer due diligence obligations are similar across regulated sectors, but the clients each sector onboards are not. The requirements below reflect how designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFBPs), financial institutions (FIs) and virtual asset service providers (VASPs) typically use customer onboarding software.
Corporate service providers, lawyers, accountants and real estate agents may onboard fewer clients than a bank, but those clients can include companies with layered ownership, nominee arrangements or several officers. The record has to capture that structure clearly enough for a small team to review it.
Banks, exchange houses, finance companies and insurers onboard large numbers of individual and corporate clients, and the work can be spread across several teams. Records have to be consistent enough to compare and complete enough to satisfy supervisory review.
Virtual asset service providers onboard retail customers alongside corporate clients such as trading firms and other service providers. Keeping individual and corporate records distinct, while recording the people behind each company, avoids gaps when a relationship is reviewed.
Customer onboarding software helps a regulated business collect, organise and maintain the information it needs about a client before a business relationship begins. In First Compliance, the customer onboarding module provides separate workflows for corporate clients, individual clients and business partners.
You choose the onboarding workflow, create or upload the record, complete the relevant sections and apply your classifications. For a corporate client, you can then add supporting documents, bank details and due diligence information, and open the KYC function and Profile Screening from the entity interface.
First Compliance supports corporate client onboarding, individual client onboarding and business partner onboarding. Each type has its own dedicated section in the platform.
A corporate entity record holds company information, business information, shareholders, directors, management and administration, the company secretary, the registered agent and authorised signatories. It also has dedicated sections for bank details, due diligence information and supporting documents.
Yes. You can configure shareholder types, share types, share classes, shareholding types and sub-shareholding types, and then apply them to each shareholder in the record.
Yes. Types of entity and legal status are set in the corporate onboarding configuration, together with the types used for directors, managers, registered agents, company secretaries and authorised signatories.
Yes. Entity Bulk Upload lets you upload multiple corporate entity records using a downloadable template, and Client Bulk Upload lets you upload multiple individual client records.
You can configure the client types and residency status options applied to individual client records.
Yes. The Historical Changes function lets you view the changes made to the information held in a corporate entity record, which helps when a reviewer or supervisor asks how a client’s details have changed since onboarding.
The corporate entity interface gives access to the KYC function and to Profile Screening. Profile Screening covers associated parties such as shareholders, directors, managers, agents and signatories, and shows the parent entity each profile relates to.
Yes. Business partners have their own dedicated onboarding section, separate from corporate and individual client onboarding.
