How a Compliance Officer is Saving 8 Hours a Week With AML and KYC Requests Using Athennian

A global investment firm based in North America with operations around Europe, Asia, and Australia has undergone a dramatic expansion in the last decade. Its diversified portfolio spans multiple sectors and regions, reflecting its extensive global reach and influence.

Given the complexity and vast scale of operations, the company knows that effective entity management is crucial. By using an automated entity solution, it secures accurate data handling, regulatory compliance, and streamlined workflows, which are critical for growth.

This is why the operations and compliance team at this investment firm partnered to replace manual tools like spreadsheets and paper with Athennian, and scaled the solution across other departments, like legal and finance. 

They chose Athennian because of its ease of use and ability to solve the most pressing problems for operations and compliance team.

“Athennian serves as a one-stop shop for me. It is easy to use, looks slick, and is intuitive, which impressed me and the operations teams."

“We all have our specific roles here, but everything we do is interlinked to other departments, and sometimes people manage responsibilities outside their roles. Having Athennian is like having an extra team member that has all the information, keeps track of entity data, and reminds us about deadlines.”

“That’s how I see Athennian—an additional team member that takes away a lot of the more simple yet time-consuming admin work and is the central port of call for all teams,” describes the Compliance Officer. 

Before settling with Athennian, the operations and legal team reviewed a few other entity solutions but settled with Athennian because of its strong customer base and solution-oriented platform, proving its market viability.

“I noticed the potential and willingness within Athennian to adapt to our challenges, and I was really impressed with their sales and customer service teams. They demonstrated a strong understanding of our pain points and provided us with solutions during our meetings. The development focus and the customer satisfaction team were the main reasons behind our preference for Athennian over other service providers."

The Challenge: Consolidating Data, Standardizing Processes, Unifying Data Sources

The main issue for the company was that data and documents were often saved in multiple places across different teams, requiring manual updates in multiple locations. This posed a risk of data inconsistencies and made it difficult to find the most current information. It became particularly challenging during busy times of the year.

“We were using multiple tools to store data. Different teams were using the same information but storing the data in different ways—one for tax, one for filing, one for LEIs, for example. Sometimes, we had to update data in more than one location. Now we've just got one–Athennian. That's a big change."

Another major challenge was tracking and managing entities across different jurisdictions. With manual tracking systems, there is always the risk of missing a deadline or scrambling right at the end to get all the data and documentation in. 

The legal team saw the value in Athennian's automated tracking and management tools, which eliminated manual tracking and provided confidence in meeting deadlines and compliance requirements.

The Solution: Completing AML and KYC Requests in 20% Less Time With Automation 

Managing AML and KYC requests before Athennian was challenging for the Compliance Officer. These requests ranged from complex onboarding projects to simple inquiries, such as identifying beneficial owners of entities. As AML and KYC regulations became stricter, the volume of requests continued to increase. 

"Athennian helps me streamline responding to KYC requests and reallocate time to more complex cases. Sometimes, people need simple information urgently, and I just direct them to Athennian. That's probably one of the biggest things that has helped me, along with managing deadlines. I'm saving an hour a day sometimes with Athennian, and that's a huge difference."

They have streamlined the AML and KYC process by letting Athennian do the hard work. They use the platform to: verify data, locate key data instantly, ensure information is accurate and up-to-date, and maintain compliance standards consistently.

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"Athennian saves me approximately 20% of the time each week with AML-related tasks. If I can save 10 mins on each task, it all adds up significantly. I imagine this percentage will only continue to increase." 

Empowering the Operations Team With Reliable and Up-to-date Data 

The urgency to adopt an automated entity solution was a relief for the operations team, as it meant a significant reduction in time spent on maintaining corporate records, managing governance documents, tracking deadlines, tax filings, and creating workflows. As the volume of data grew, the burden of these tasks became increasingly time-consuming, but Athennian has significantly lightened this load.

“One of the biggest pain points for the operations team was keeping all entity data and documents up-to-date. We needed a one-stop shop for all information because data was changing constantly."

With Athennian, the operations team can store and find all entity-related information, such as corporate records, virtual minute books, compliance documents, and tax filings, in a few clicks—no more sending emails or digging through files.

“Dealing with multiple filing deadlines was also a pain point. We needed a central place to manage processes, deadlines, and reminders, given the extensive filing requirements of operating across different jurisdictions. A system like Athennian is important for us to manage different tax filings and set tasks and reminders.”

Now, the operations team uses Athennian's task management and reminder features to track deadlines and receive automated reminders for important compliance dates. The confidence in knowing that deadlines won't be missed makes a massive difference in mitigating the risk of non-compliance and associated penalties.

The power of an automated solution lies in its accessibility. When people across different functions can connect and collaborate to improve business decisions, workflows become clearer, and productivity increases. 

This is how the Compliance Officer envisions Athennian's role at this global investment management firm—where the legal, operations, and finance teams have accessible data that won't get lost or buried. 

“Our legal and compliance teams are using Athennian to check data, pull information, and manage workflows through tasks and reminders.”  

She believes that further integrating AI features will simplify workflows even more, providing intuitive updates and adding back more time in the day.