Meet Adlanter
Adlanter is a business advisory firm with more than 420 professionals, a presence in 7 offices and more than 35 years of track record. It supports national and international companies with comprehensive solutions in the legal, tax, labour, compliance, global mobility and talent recruitment fields.
Anti-money laundering is part of the organisation's everyday work: the professionals who manage the relationship with each client take an active part in the KYC process, always in coordination with the Compliance team.
“My main responsibility is to make sure our processes are regulated according to the legislation in force, especially in the area of anti-money laundering, and to have a safe framework to work in.” - Judit Pardo, Compliance Department at Adlanter
That model, very close to the client, at the same time demanded a process that was uniform, easy to follow and able to scale at the pace of the Group's growth.
The challenge: growing without multiplying the administrative work
For years, KYC management relied on email. Every new file meant requesting documentation from the client, reviewing the information received, following up on pending documents and coordinating the reviews with Compliance. All of it spread across emails, attachments and manual checks.
The system worked, but every new client meant more time spent on administrative tasks and less on higher-value activities. Closing the documentation of a KYC could take around a week, largely because of the reminders needed to gather it.
“The growth we have had in recent years created the need to look for a solution, to find an application that would give us traceability, adaptability and automation in our daily tasks. In the end we were investing a lot of time in duplicated tasks; that is something we have been able to solve with Parallel.”
Adlanter wanted to centralise all the client's information, keep the full traceability of the process and make the work easier both for the professionals and for the Compliance team.
The solution: a single place for the whole KYC cycle
Implementing Parallel did not change the teams' responsibilities; it changed the way they work.
The professionals are still the ones who know the client and follow up on the file, but now everything happens within one platform. The client receives the KYC, provides the documentation and signs from a single environment. The professional checks the status of the process at any time and Compliance has all the information centralised to carry out the review.
“Anti-money laundering is deeply embedded in our corporate culture, so the professionals take charge of sending the KYC. Together with the compliance team they follow up with the client so they complete it, in case any difficulty comes up or the documentation attached is not exactly the right one. The professional is always very involved when carrying out the KYC.”
A single file per client. Client profiles bring together all the anti-money laundering information in one place, and the integration with Kamaleon, Adlanter's internal client management platform, avoids duplicating data across systems.
“By applying client profiles we have managed to fully centralise the whole anti-money laundering process.”
Risk criteria, applied on their own. Parallel's scoring model automatically replicates the risk criteria defined by the Group, so that every file is classified without anyone having to apply them by hand. KYC review dates are also calculated automatically, so the update calendar no longer depends on a manual check.
Another aspect the team particularly valued was the platform's ability to adapt.
“The system is very intuitive and very easy to train the professionals on. And if in your day-to-day work you come across a new circumstance, the team listens to you and always proposes a solution able to adapt to those new needs.”
The results: more control, fewer manual tasks and a better client experience
Today Adlanter manages close to 400 KYC processes a year from a single platform. All the documentation, the verifications and the history of every file remain available for any review or audit.
The most visible improvement is in the timings. What used to take close to a week (gathering and signing the client's documentation) now takes a median of under 24 hours, and the full process, including the internal review, usually closes in three or four days.
“It has saved us a huge amount of time, above all because of how fast and efficient it is. The main problem was the constant use of email to obtain documentation. Having an application where everything is already stored, and a central point you can come back to whenever you need it, changes everything. It has freed up a great many daily tasks, especially in follow-up and obtaining documentation.”
For Judit, the client experience has changed too: the process is more orderly and conveys more confidence than one handled solely by email.
“For the client, dealing with us is much more formal. It is no longer all by email; when we send it through Parallel there is a predefined message. That gives them the assurance that they are working with something well done, with formality. And a good client experience conveys professionalism.”
A solid foundation to keep growing
The professionals now work from a single source of information, Compliance keeps control of the client's whole lifecycle, and every file keeps the full history of the actions carried out.
“With Parallel, and with that ability to adapt they have, we have the peace of mind of always being able to keep up with the needs of our day-to-day work.”
More than digitising KYC, Adlanter has built an anti-money laundering model able to accompany the Group's growth without increasing the administrative burden on its teams.
