Solo Develops Reusable KYC Model for Banks

Solo, a consumer reporting agency, has developed a reusable customer-verification model aimed at reducing duplication in KYC processes across banks and fintech companies.

The pilot has been developed in coordination with the US Treasury Department, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). It allows financial institutions to reuse customer verification work previously completed by another participating institution, provided that the work meets the requesting institution’s compliance standards.

Under the model, a bank submits its own Customer Identification Program (CIP) policy and required verification procedures to Solo’s network. The system then identifies other regulated institutions that may already have conducted equivalent or stronger verification on the same customer.

If the earlier verification satisfies the requesting bank’s requirements, it can receive a network-audited record of the work instead of repeating the entire customer-verification process.

Solo has developed Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) certificates for participating institutions. A bank or fintech must first document the procedures it followed to verify a customer or business. Solo then audits the process and validates whether the institution performed the steps it claims to have undertaken.

Once the verification has been audited, Solo can issue a reusable certificate that other institutions participating in the network may use, subject to their own policies and compliance requirements.

The approach seeks to address a longstanding challenge in bank-fintech partnerships. Financial institutions frequently rely on verification undertaken by partners, but differences in compliance standards, documentation and auditability can create regulatory risk.

Solo’s model does not require one institution simply to accept another organisation’s judgement. Instead, the platform maps previously completed verification against the requesting bank’s own policy, excludes work that does not meet its requirements and independently audits the underlying verification.

Supporting documents are also maintained so that institutions can demonstrate compliance during regulatory examinations.

The model could help banks reduce the risk associated with inadequate customer vetting by fintech partners. Regulators have previously raised concerns where bank-fintech arrangements failed to maintain sufficiently robust controls under the Bank Secrecy Act and KYC requirements.

It could also improve the customer experience. Consumers often need to repeat identity-verification procedures each time they establish a relationship with another financial institution, even when equivalent checks have already been completed elsewhere.

Solo founder and CEO Georgina Merhom said the absence of a common framework has historically made it difficult for institutions to consistently represent, audit and evaluate customer-verification work across organisations.

The latest initiative builds on Solo’s earlier data-sharing network, launched in 2025, which allows banks to share customer information directly rather than relying exclusively on third-party data aggregators.

The regulatory environment has also become more supportive of alternative customer-identification methods. In June 2025, the OCC, FDIC and National Credit Union Administration, with the concurrence of FinCEN, granted banks and credit unions an optional exemption permitting them to obtain customers’ Taxpayer Identification Number information from qualified third-party sources instead of requiring customers to provide it directly, subject to risk-based CIP procedures.

For banks and fintech firms, reusable verification could potentially reduce onboarding friction and duplicated compliance expenditure. However, its broader adoption will depend on whether participating institutions can maintain strong audit trails, data governance, privacy safeguards and consistent regulatory standards while sharing verified customer information.