A Fund Manager in a Family Office Regulated across the EU with increasing AML needs

One of Avallone’s customers is a Norwegian Fund Manager, part of a larger well-established family office. They are regulated by the Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA), but since they work with other European-based funds, they therefore require regulatory compliance across multiple territories.

We spoke to the Fund Manager’s Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) who takes care of compliance and legal services within the business, to find out why he and his team decided to use Avallone to save time, streamline complex structures, boost compliance, and even improve collaboration across colleagues.

Time wasted managing manual processes and complex structures

With extensive experience working in AML, the Fund’s CCO was well aware of how labor-intensive and inefficient compliance processes could be. Immediately after joining the company, one of his key priorities was therefore exploring options for automation of certain KYC and AML tasks.

The Fund Manager’s existing processes involved use of manual processes. While this process “worked”, it relied heavily on manual tasks and was wasting hours of time unnecessarily. This process was incredibly time consuming, and it needed to be repeated each time they received a request.

Lack of visibility on complex connections

As a relatively new starter in the company during this time, the CCO also faced challenges understanding the complexities within the Fund’s legal entity structures. The organization comprises multiple entities  making it difficult to understand Officer connections, and relationships between Ultimate Beneficial Owners, without extensive prior knowledge.

“I had to search manually for a specific Officer, understand their connections, and rely on my memory to help me unpick the various relationships and structures. It was an incredibly inefficient and potentially error-prone process.”

Staying compliant while collaborating across entities

The CCO experienced additional challenges in managing the sharing of data and documents between their legal entities. Each entity needed their own set of AML documentation, operating within the regulatory context of “Chinese walls” - with restricted access of internal data between the teams. However, the teams needed an appropriate and efficient way of sharing sensitive documents and data between the two entities.

“Important documents and data were ‘floating around or less structured’ between the two entities. We knew that there was an opportunity for collaborating more effectively, while also boosting compliance.”

One single place for effortless legal entity visibility and automated responses

Originally, the team intended to assess multiple KYC tools, but when they struck upon Avallone they knew immediately that it was the solution they had been looking for:

“When we were first introduced to Avallone, it was instantly obvious that this was the ideal product to meet our needs.”

So the Fund Management team and the CCO agreed to take the decision to bring Avallone on board. The process began with the CCO working with his Avallone Customer Service Manager (CSM) on a series of onboarding training sessions.

“Our Avallone training was smooth and incredibly high quality. We had great chemistry with our dedicated CSM, who always followed up to check that our questions had been answered. The entire team at Avallone was hands on so we never needed to request anything - it was all taken care of.”

Hours saved thanks to AML automation and effortless legal entity visibility

With access to Avallone’s KYC Hub, it’s now so easy for the CCO to manage legal entities, visualize complex connections and get a full overview on Officers and UBOs within the funds and its sub-funds.

“With Avallone it’s served on a platter - you don’t need to remember anything or check other records. You can just click on each individual and see all the structures and relationships presented in a user-friendly way. This was incredibly useful, especially for me as a new starter in the organization, and particularly as these relationships evolve.”

Responding to KYC / AML requests now takes “minutes vs hours”

Using Avallone’s KYC Responder to answer AML / KYC requests has saved the CCO and his team a significant amount of time. The Norwegian Fund Manager’s KYC questions and responses are digitized, meaning that whenever they receive a KYC request, automated responses are ready at the click of a button, and verifying and sharing responses takes seconds.

“Responding to KYC requests used to take hours and now, with Avallone, it takes minutes.”

The KYC Responder also acts as an archive of answers to previous questions, with previous responses stored for future use. As questionnaires tend to stay consistent from year to year, the process of responding to KYC is getting more efficient with time.

Effortless, compliant management of documents and data

Now that the Norwegian Fund Manager has separate tenants for its sister companies based in different territories, compliance with regulatory requirements - such as maintaining Chinese walls - is much easier.

“We each have our own tenants within Avallone, that neither entity can access. And if we need to share documentation between our entities, we have easy, compliant ways to do so.”

The CCO also appreciates specific Avallone features, such as automatic notifications of documents about to expire, and the ability to easily create and share documents such as AML letters.

External support from Avallone feels like an extension of the team

The CCO also described the impact of having invaluable support from Avallone’s team, who have deep expertise in AML, KYC and wider bank compliance, as well as knowledge of the Norwegian Fund Manager’s structure, challenges and overall goals.  

“On a personal level, I feel that the Avallone team really understands our company and also has a good understanding of my own knowledge level. That means that they can provide tailored support to help me fulfil my role. Working in a small team, it’s reassuring to have that external support - knowing that someone outside of the company has your back.”

Bonus Avallone impact: Improved collaboration with colleagues

Using Avallone has not only boosted efficiency in creating and sharing documents between teams, but it’s also enabled the Fund Manager to improve collaboration between colleagues.  

“As a small team, having a tool has helped us to better understand our individual roles and responsibilities relating to AML and KYC. It also just makes life easier that we’re all using the same software and therefore speaking the same language.”

Because AML / KYC management is now more efficient, it also means that the CCO can take full control of this work, more effectively manage risk, and boost the team’s compliance work:

“Thanks to Avallone, AML and KYC have become much easier for us as a business. This has enabled us to manage risk more accurately and effectively and create more of a professional environment internally.”

In Conclusion:

The business value of embracing change

The CCO is now focused on getting even more out of Avallone, working collaboratively with its product development team on creating specific reports, enabling customized access between tenants, and designing scans for missing documentation. He has identified that these features will save him even more time when it comes to taking care of annual compliance control. The CCO is also curious to explore Avallone’s AI features.

The CCO recognizes that these positive results would never have been possible if he had stayed in his comfort zone, continuing to manage AML and KYC using a combination of email attachments and other manual processes.

“I’ve been working in AML for years and I was so comfortable working manually with emails and attachments, so it was a mental adjustment to move everything within a tool. However, now I’m so happy that we took this step - the entire process has been smooth, and we’ve saved so much time. We’ve positively transformed how we work as a team.”

Changing systems is a leap of faith, but working with products that are fit-for-purpose - with access to expert support from Avallone’s dedicated team, there has been no looking back for the CCO.