GLOBAL PAYMENTS COMPANY

TRANSFERMATE HAS BUILT THE LARGEST NON-BANK PAYMENTS y acquiring 92 payment institutions/e-money licenses as a foundation for this expansive network, TransferMate can move money on behalf of their customers around the world at incredible speed and at low cost.

INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE WORLD THAT SUPPORTS THE MOST CURRENCIES WORLDWIDE OF ANY B2B PAYMENTS TECHNOLOGY.

Irina Tsonova leads the Global Due Diligence function at TransferMate and is responsible for managing high performing teams located in

Bulgaria, Mexico and the Philippines, with a focus on high standards, good customer service, and execution of controls in line with the firm’s risk tolerance and regulatory requirements. Having joined TransferMate in 2022, Irina’s top priority is leading and implementing change initiatives from inception through to implementation, providing input and guidance on best in-class digital onboarding workflows.

“WE HAVE A MODEL TEAM, WE HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE, WE HAVE THE PEOPLE, WE HAVE THE ATTITUDE, AND WE ARE USING THIS TO ENSURE THAT TRANSFERMATE IS THE GLOBAL LEADER IN THE B2B AND EMBEDDED PAYMENT SPACE”

Irina Tsonova, Head of Global Due Diligence.

Streamlining the client onboarding experience yet ensuring the right balance of risk management is a business priority, and a personal mission for Irina. Making the onboarding process as smooth as possible for clients is a must, and being a global organisation, licensed in over 50 countries and jurisdictions, this breath of coverage can present hurdles when trying to establish global standard and forego unnecessary complexity in the compliance program. Irina says, “The key to compliance is a commonsense approach, absent of surprises for the client when onboarding. TransferMate’s Compliance team is the best team I have ever worked with. We have a model team, we have the knowledge, we have the people, we have the attitude, and we are using this to ensure that TransferMate is the global leader in the B2B and embedded payment space.”

TransferMate partners with ComplyAdvantage, a global Regtech provider, for all its client onboarding, transaction screening and monitoring. Irina adds, “ComplyAdvantage is one of our most valuable partners. We selected them not only for their industry leading solution, but also as they share the same vision as us to use ‘compliance as a competitive advantage’, and they support our mission to develop dynamic rules and controls tuned to specific inherent vulnerability scenarios, ultimately providing better customer service.

ComplyAdvantage is fit for growth as we scale as a business, offering new product types. They work with us to ensure we keep the bad guys out of our business and don't bother our good clients with overly cumbersome compliance controls.”

When it comes to financial crime risk detection, TransferMate aims to have “the best compliance team in the business,” said Alex Clements, the firm’s Global Head of FinCrime, Monitoring and Investigations.

TransferMate wanted a partner that could help its compliance analysts stay ahead of rapidly changing criminal behaviour. That required a customisable solution capable of managing multiple risk scenarios as well as accommodating new information from law enforcement and other sources.

“We chose ComplyAdvantage because we wanted a complete solution. We wanted to strip back our data and understand every data point within our model,” explained Clements.

One team, two organisations: The importance of implementation

From the beginning, it was important for TransferMate to partner with a provider that understood its business and clients. During the implementation process, both teams communicated almost daily. Clements described this as a “one team, two organisations” approach. TransferMate worked with ComplyAdvantage implementation consultants to define its data model and scope out the bespoke rules it wanted to build for transaction monitoring. ComplyAdvantage used its industry expertise to help TransferMate achieve its goals, sharing ideas and best practices.

In the first year of the partnership, TransferMate has reduced the time it spends investigating transaction risk alerts by up to 50%. Analysts complete transactions that hit a compliance control in up to 40 minutes. TransferMate has also experienced a reduction in false-positive alerts, giving analysts more time to focus on the alerts that present a real risk.

Learn more about TransferMate’s best practice AML program in this interview with Alex Clements

Streamlining client onboarding while meeting regulatory requirements is a priority for all compliance teams – and TransferMate is no exception. They face the need to identify and verify all clients they onboard, yet also provide a smooth onboarding experience for those clients.

Transfermate chose to partner with Dun & Bradstreet to do just this.

Using our compliance data and technology, they can quickly and easily verify clients against the deep, trusted information available on over 228+ countries and territories, in Dun & Bradstreet’s Data Cloud.

“Dun & Bradstreet has helped us become much more efficient in client onboarding. We no longer need to log in to each country’s company registration web site or download many different documents. We now get a summary of the data we need in just a few clicks, which has accelerated our KYC process. And as everyone knows, the quicker the KYC process is, the better the onboarding experience, and the happier the customer is.”

Irina Tsonova, Head of Global Due Diligence, Transfermate

Dun & Bradstreet combines global data and local expertise to help our clients make smarter decisions. We help you understand who you could do business with, who you should do business with, and who you can do business with.

Our comprehensive data and analytical tools can help you to build effective KYC programs that support compliance with regulations and accelerate due diligence.

To date, our Data Cloud comprises over 510 million company records, more than 500 million shareholders, principals, and controllers, 1.5 million PEPs and 700+ blacklists, sanction lists and more.

Various steps of the KYC (Know Your Customer) process are supported by different partners that TransferMate selects for their individual expertise, be it identity verification, business verification, screening, etc. Irina elaborates, “We are aiming to achieve one system containing all the onboarding steps, end to end. Best client experience always comes with fewer interactions and fast service. That is why we use Dun & Bradstreet for the KYC part in our onboarding process. Corporate compliance is more complex than ever. Information is dispersed across multiple sources, and manually managing it slows it down and increases the risk of error, whilst the D&B onboard solution that we use provides a single point of access to information and tools to research and make compliance decisions more easily.”

Irina stresses the significance of having trust across the many teams within the company. She says, “TransferMate is a unique workplace. Such a nice corelation between different teams is rarely seen nowadays. We are all here for the same purpose, and you can feel it every day. We value human relationships across the company. There are employees that have been here for over 10 years, so you get the feeling that it’s a place that people have really invested into seeing the firm grow from strength to strength.”

Optimising the KYC process is Irina’s principal assignment for 2023. She continues, “Our goal is to have the whole process automated. An efficient and bestin-class onboarding experience is what we are looking to achieve.”

So, what are the key attributes Irina looks for when building a strong team? She answers, “Firstly, trust is essential, and creating a safe environment where people feel comfortable to grow, develop and speak up. Managers without the trust from the team will have an issue in delivering key objectives. Secondly, we need the knowledge and the practice, and thirdly, we need the right attitude. If we have all that in place, we are heading in the right direction. And I believe this is the case for TransferMate.”

TransferMate’s plans for the future involve securing its position as a leader in the B2B payments space. Irina concludes, “We have the infrastructure, we have the technology, and we have the highest standards of security and compliance. We’re looking to fundamentally change the way businesses pay, and we’ve got all the tools to do just that.”

For further information on TransferMate, visit www.transfermate.com