SWIFT has announced that the Dominican Republic has become the first country to implement the electronic messaging platform’s know your customer (KYC) utility as a financial community.

Nearly all member banks of the Dominican Republic SWIFT user community have now become registered users of the KYC Registry.

Wholesale advantages
“Adopting the SWIFT central KYC utility as a whole community means that banks in the Dominican Republic will raise their levels of compliance with applicable anti-money laundering standards,” said director of payments and systems at the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic, Fabiola Herrera.

“It also allows us to strengthen the mechanisms for preventing and mitigating risks associated with crimes of a financial nature in the Dominican Republic,” he added.

Registering progress
SWIFT announced recently that its KYC Registry now has entities from across 109 countries, facilitating compliance with a growing number of correspondent relationships worldwide.

Launched in December 2014, the KYC Registry aims to provide a simple, secure way to exchange a standardised set of information for correspondent banking KYC compliance, which SWIFT claims increases efficiency and reduces risk.

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