CASE STUDY: Hamburg Commercial Bank

Hamburg Commercial Bank (HCOB) is the first privatised Landesbank in Germany.

A market-leading organisation in commercial project finance for the real estate, renewable energy and infrastructure sectors, HCOB was looking to embark on a digital transformation journey for the onboarding process of their corporate clients.

The bank selected Know Your Customer as the partner of choice to digitise the steps involved in the collection and verification of company documents as well as to centralise some of the traditional AML/KYC-functions through a secure digital platform.

The project was spearheaded by the bank’s internal DEC (Digital Excellence Centre), which was instrumental as the bridge between the bank’s internal stakeholders and KYC’s digital-first approach.

“Our new centralised onboarding platform provides a streamlined KYC experience to our range of domestic and international corporate clients, while simplifying backend processes for our internal stakeholders and compliance team members.”

— Jan Sojka, Head of Digital Excellence Center

This in-depth case study retraces the steps of the Know Your Customer x HCOB implementation, focusing in particular on:

• The agile methodology embraced by the two teams working together;
• The innovative approach to data integration introduced to ensure better quality and on-going reliability of KYC data;
• The specific security requirements determined by the deployment of the new system in the Azure Cloud;
• The steps taken to refine the end customer journey throughout the client onboarding phase.