SME onboarding under 72 hours

The problem

SME onboarding takes 14–18 days versus a 2–3 day competitor promise. 60% of a KYC analyst's time is manual: PDF pulls from the ARES registry, ownership verification, World-Check copy-paste. Risk-committee escalations move via Word documents in email. 25% of prospects abandon the process before the account opens — a direct growth headwind.

What we'd ship

A KYC agent that orchestrates ARES + Cribis + World-Check through MCP tools, extracts ownership structure from registry scans with Azure AI Document Intelligence, drafts the risk-committee memo in Word, and tracks case state in a SharePoint case workspace. Every step is logged for DORA; every automated finding carries its source and timestamp. The analyst still makes the call — the agent just removes the clerical drag.

Stack

• Azure AI Document Intelligence for registry scans + ownership docs
• Azure OpenAI (GPT-4o) for memo drafting + ownership-graph narration
• MCP servers wrapping ARES, Cribis, World-Check (Refinitiv)
• Temenos T24 (on-prem) via existing integration
• SharePoint case workspace + Copilot Studio pilot surface

Guardrails & compliance

• DORA compliance — full audit log, vendor register, resilience testing
• EU AI Act high-risk (credit-adjacent) — agent surfaces facts, analyst decides, decision record is immutable
• AML / ČNB: every World-Check hit mapped to the analyst's disposition with reason code
• Weekly drift monitoring on registry extraction accuracy
• "Human must approve" hard-gate at the account-opening step

Typical timeline

1. Week 0–4 Data contracts + audit pipeline

   Formalise ARES + Cribis + World-Check access, design the audit-log pipeline for DORA evidence, align on what "decision" means legally.

2. Week 4–12 Pilot on net-new SME clients

   100-client cohort, measure cycle time and drop-off against baseline, tune memo templates with the risk committee.

3. Week 12–24 Rollout + legacy refresh

   Extend to all new SME onboarding, then run the existing client book through the enriched workflow for DORA-driven refresh.