10008674Developing a cross-industry digital compliance solution to revolutionise, democratise and streamline corporate due diligence for businessesClosedFeasibility StudiesInnovate UKUmazi is seeking to provide institutions with a cross-industry digital compliance solution that drastically reduces the complexity of compliance processes and improves efficiency by automating repeatable steps; using blockchain technology. Businesses that transact with each other often conduct due diligence on each other. This due diligence requires the verification of identity and credentials, making sure the organisation is legitimate and low-risk. Traditional due diligence processes are a cumbersome, manual, time-consuming exercise, and vary from organisation to organisation; making the process repetitive and costly. Umazi simplifies the due diligence process by leveraging distributed ledger technology to create a cryptographically secure corporate identity. The distributed ledger facilitates a secure and immutable way for the corporate to control and share their identity. The process becomes automated and streamlined. For financially regulated institutions this means better regulatory compliance, less regulatory, operational and reputational risk and improved KYC (corporate customers) and onboarding experience with customers. Alongside, significant back-office cost-savings. These benefits apply across all industries where it's important to verify the identity of your trading partner, such as large corporate partnerships and manufacturing outsource agreements; Umazi's solution is the same for all of them. The solution provides an exchange for a verified corporate identity, regardless of industry, country or language. Due diligence is a thorough appraisal of a business that a potential investor or buyer will undertake before engaging in a business deal. If you're the party doing the buying or investing, your lawyer will review the target company's assets & liabilities, structure, operations and business relationships. Financially regulated institutions (e.g. banks, insurers, law firms, real-estate, etc.) are required by law to conduct due diligence and risk assessments on clients. Tier-1 banks spend 15% of their costs/year on compliance. These institutions lose ~10% of customers due to onboarding friction. In 2012, the US Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network announced work on a new due diligence rule that would compel collection of ultimate beneficial ownership information. The publication of the Panama Papers in April 2016 accelerated the process, when the millions of leaked documents included in this trove detailed how offshore shell corporations have been used for money laundering, tax evasion and other illegal purposes. One month after they were released to the public, the US Treasury issued its Customer Due Diligence Rule. These events have spurred a global race for enhanced corporate due diligence that is sector-agnostic, cross-jurisdictional and independent of language.