Under HMRC guidance to the industry, it was critical for Barratt Redrow to understand and be able to articulate the platform's functionality they were looking to adopt to ensure it met the regulatory standards and to do that it could enhance its overall compliance procedures. Assurance they could prove this to regulators was key for Barratt Redrow’s decision.
Barratt Redrow, a leading UK residential property developer, embarked on a quest to source new opportunities to improve their compliance procedures. They wanted to determine whether a digital solution could help them improve their AML compliance and streamline their customer journey across the entire business in 29 divisions and over 900 users.
Before using SmartSearch, Barratt Redrow employed a hybrid approach to compliance, blending manual verification with automated checks. While this method provided a level of reliability, Barratt Redrow acknowledged the constraints of human oversight and sought a solution that could improve efficiencies, futureproof their procedures and reduce interventions.
This led to extensive market research and testing to identify their key business requirements. They soon discovered the intricate compliance landscape, shaped by evolving regulations and the relentless creativity of fraudsters which has created a persistent challenge for the property market to navigate the ever-changing regulations.
Barratt Redrow had to grasp the complexity of technical capabilities and soon discovered many Identity and Digital Security Providers (IDPS) primarily targeted financial institutions and didn’t understand the specific requirements and risk appetite they were looking for in the property industry.
To overcome challenges in the marketplace, Barratt Redrow carried out a competitive procurement, narrowing down their options to a select pool of candidates. During the process, Barratt Redrow, gained a deep understanding of their business requirements and regulatory landscape. SmartSearch stood out early in the selection process due to several key factors.
Firstly, SmartSearch’s development roadmap provided clarity and assurance to Barratt Redrow that not only were they going to meet their requirements and improve their compliance process now, but in the future too. They appreciated knowing how the new and upcoming functionalities such as open banking, bespoke workflows, and international identity checks would align with their business objectives and felt rest assured that SmartSearch’s expertise, industry knowledge and technology was the perfect match for their business.
For Barratt Redrow, the high volume of searches demanded a flexible compliance platform. SmartSearch delivered this through the use of bespoke workflows and auto notifications. This enabled a consistent standard of compliance across the business. It gave Barratt Redrow complete control over their compliance across the business. This enabled streamlined and efficient policy implementation with the adaptability for future adjustments.
A key differentiator for SmartSearch was our SmartDoc solution and its passive liveness functionality. SmartDoc, our global document verification solution, uses passive liveness detection to confirm the authenticity of a selfie without requiring any additional user actions like speaking or head movements. This user-friendly approach, which runs unobtrusively in the background, provided Barratt Redrow with the assurance they needed for a smooth client onboarding journey.
The overall collaboration with SmartSearch has demonstrated a step change in their ability to manage their compliance processes and the customer onboarding journey. By adopting SmartSearch’s systematic process, Barratt Redrow has experienced enhanced visibility and control with permissions configured at the appropriate levels across the organisation.
The user access level configurability provided by SmartSearch has been instrumental in tailoring permissions to specific needs, as well as ensuring efficiencies and compliant operations.
After implementing SmartSearch's solution, Barratt Redrow experienced significant improvements in three key areas: streamlined compliance processes, optimised customer onboarding journey, and enhanced control through tailored user access.
Barratt Redrow acknowledge that the partnership has not only streamlined internal processes but also optimised the customer onboarding journey, utilising automation to enhance efficiencies for both the organisation and their clients.