Onboarding and compliance
for regulated companies and developers
Onboarding and compliance
for regulated companies and developers
Onboarding and compliance
for regulated companies and developers
Almost70% of all lawyers across all firm sizes see the growing demands on their own IT expertise as the biggest challenge in the development of their firms.
Time-consuming, administrative processes and extended obligations, such as those arising from new money laundering legislation (AMLA) and the associated know-your-customer (KYC) processes, make it difficult to keep track of and manage the digital transformation. However, this calls into question the actual objectives - to ensure legal compliance on the one hand and to work successfully and trustingly with clients on the other.
The Berlin-based legal-tech company BetterCo, founded by Eckhard Ortwein, positions itself as a KYC and trust platform for the collaboration of AMLA-regulated companies in the areas of tax, law, finance and their network of customers, clients, investors and buyers.
In this interview, founder and CEO Eckhard Ortwein talks about the purpose, benefits and future of BetterCo as a single-source-of-trust platform:
BetterCo is a cloud-based trust and collaboration platform that enables collaboration between AML regulated entities and their clients.
This includes, for example, cooperation between law firms and tax consultants with their clients, funds with investors, payment service providers with traders and brokers with buyers. In particular, the time and costs involved in MLA and the associated KYC processes are reduced. A reliable basis of trust and cooperation can then be created on this basis.
The number and complexity of compliance guidelines, the requirements for implementing money laundering legislation and the associated KYC processes are constantly increasing. Regulated companies in the legal, tax and finance sectors are particularly affected by this, and are additionally burdened by high formal hurdles. Cooperation with customers, clients, investors and buyers has become increasingly difficult, and their dissatisfaction grows with every additional PDF form. Maintaining an overview becomes much more difficult when "collaboration" takes place via email ping-pong.
A feeling of being overwhelmed and frustration has simply crept into the collaboration.
This is exactly where we come in with BetterCo by creating a trustworthy, central platform for cooperation for all parties involved - a single source of trust - on which joint processes are mapped.
Intuitive usability, the use of public data sources, shared access and smart AI help to optimize and automate time-consuming bureaucratic processes. All company data, events, documents, metrics and tasks are up-to-date and accessible to everyone on a centralized platform that is open via interfaces. This means that everyone has what they need for their work.
In this way, we not only achieve high efficiency by reducing processing times from weeks to days and cutting costs by up to 90%. At the same time, regulated companies drastically increase the satisfaction of their customers, clients, investors and buyers and thus the trust in their competence. This creates long-term loyalty and mutual success.
"In regulated industries, the implementation of customer onboarding and monitoring processes present employees with major challenges," says Eckhard Ortwein, founder of BetterCo. "This is where we come in by optimizing and automating time-consuming administrative processes and mapping them on the BetterCo Trust platform for all parties."
Our founding team has worked in regulated industries for many years and has observed how the requirements of theMoney LaunderingAct (GwG) for the necessary Know-Your-Customer(KYC) processes for the onboarding and ongoing monitoring of customers have constantly grown. At the same time, however, the mapping of these processes has stopped at the exchange of emails and PDF forms. This is extremely inefficient, highly unsatisfactory and tedious for all parties and does not adequately close compliance gaps - even though the same data is exchanged over and over again on the basis of the AMLA.
This is exactly where we come in with BetterCo. We see the AMLA as a quasi-standard on the basis of which we use publicly accessible data sources to drastically simplify cooperation between AMLA-regulated companies and their customers, clients, investors and buyers in order to reduce costs, ensure legal compliance and achieve the prerequisites for successful, long-term cooperation.
The lawyer of the future will essentially continue to provide very competent legal advice in their specialist areas. However, they will be much more efficient and significantly reduce the proportion of administrative tasks that they currently perform themselves. In other words, they will be able to focus on "billable" tasks.
The way in which legal advice is provided has already changed dramatically with the advancement of technology, particularly software and the internet - from faxes to emails, from filing cabinets to cloud data management and this trend will continue. I think lawyers will be more challenged in their "digital" way of working and will need to be more adaptable accordingly.
I think it's important to stay up to date and keep an eye on what legal tech innovations are happening and catching on. There are so many ways to make your working life easier and more efficient these days. That's why I think it's advisable to experiment with new solutions "hands-on" and not always just wait until the introduction of a new solution becomes inevitable. It often helps to take the client's perspective and adapt to their development.
I find it exciting that the majority of lawyers in particular see legal tech as an opportunity for improvement. We have currently elaborated on this topic in a white paper that can be downloaded from our website.
The improved and simplified handling of KYC processes and ongoing client monitoring result in cost savings of up to 90%. For a law firm with around 100 new clients per year and 1,000 existing clients, this means a substantial amount of around EUR 24,000 per year. Using the "ROI calculator" on our website, every law firm can form its own opinion.
At the same time, the higher level of competence in the collaboration increases client satisfaction. This is a factor that should not be underestimated. Collaboration is suddenly more fun and that is a basis for working together successfully in the long term
We have set ourselves the goal of becoming the standard cooperation platform in Germany for regulated companies and their customers, clients, investors and buyers. As the AMLA will be directly applicable law as a planned EU regulation, our internationalization is also on the horizon.
Book a free product demo and find out how BetterCo realizes a clear, common and consistent vision for regulated companies and all stakeholders. And on top of that, measurably reduce effort, time and costs.
Start with mandates in hours instead of weeks and relieve staff
Experience 5x faster customer due diligence
Efficient risk management thanks to automated compliance checks and customizable risk models
Verify the identity of your clients in minutes & sign digitally
Protect your company with continuous monitoring
First-class collaboration and digital housekeeping with clients & customers
Integrate BetterCo seamlessly into your system and offer your customers an exceptional customer experience throughout the entire customer lifecycle.
