The Luxembourg branch of global accounting giant Deloitte has developed KYCstart (pronounced ‘kickstart’), a new way to perform customer on-boarding using blockchain technology. It introduces digital identities with the objective of onboarding customers just once to be used across several different platforms and organizations.

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The developers explain that in this model, KYC Added-Value Services Providers are regulated entities that are authorized to perform Know-Your-Customer (KYC) procedures for users who want start relationships with various businesses such as banks, insurance companies, funds, asset servicers, and more. Customers directly control to whom they share their personal information and documents, keeping track of these authorizations using smart contracts.

Thibault Chollet, Blockchain Leader at Deloitte Luxembourg, explains: “With this proof of concept and related ecosystem, we demonstrate the benefits of using Blockchain and smart contract to considerably reduce the costs of one of the most important burden of our institutional clients: KYC and customer on-boarding.”

“Providers can now rely on specialized entities to delegate and mutualize the KYC and AML/CTF procedures, reducing the cost of both onboarding and ongoing monitoring,” continues Maxime Heckel, Director at Deloitte Luxembourg specializing in KYC services.

He adds that Deloitte will start providing ‘KYC as-a-Service’ to financial institutions as of mid-2017. KYCstart will be one of the proposed counterparty on-boarding channels for the service.