‘KYB’ beyond simply aggregating business data sources is a hot topic, and the notion of having a single Compliance Platform which solves for all KYB and KYC use cases is moving front and centre in the fight against fraud & AML.

There are two sides to this equation, and it boils down to supply and demand.

I recently had a particularly interesting meeting with someone who leads strategy at a multi-billion-dollar business which offers a suite of risk and fraud solutions, none of which offer any onboarding capability. To put the onboarding opportunity into perspective I said that if they asked the 1500 US community banks they offer technology how they do it, they would get 1500 different answers - becoming the default choice in a market where no default choice exists is one of the big prizes up for grabs.

So to a certain extent, supply and demand are converging - I’ve said for a long time that most compliance teams just don’t believe there is a better way to run KYB, so they are just dealing with the mix of providers and manual processes to make the best of a bad situation. This is changing though, and it is changing in part because of the claims that are being made by vendors who are piling into the space. The result?

Everything from exaggerated claims to straight-up lies that riddle this industry. Vendors touting "all-in-one" platforms that are anything but, beta features paraded as live, and data coverage so "global" it barely scratches beyond the US and a couple of EU spots. It's frustrating, especially when you're the CEO of a company like Detected that plays it straight- no smoke, no mirrors, just proven tech that does what it says - really well.

"With over 20 years in the Financial Crime sector, I've used countless KYB platforms- most miss the mark. Detected stood out immediately with its customizable workflows that address the unique nuances of KYB, including secure, seamless due diligence on UBOs. It delivers a dynamic, intuitive onboarding experience for both compliance teams and customers."

Wadeeha Jackson - Director of Client KYC and Due Diligence @ Zelis

Why focus on this now?

A) KYB is under the microscope with regs like AMLD6 in Europe and evolving FINCEN rules in the US, ramping up scrutiny. But beyond that, I've lost count of the RFPs where we were up against "competitors" whose demo featured vaporware- features "coming soon" that swayed decisions but never materialised and it is only very very rarely that a business will slam on the brakes post RFP, it is easier to just accept workarounds. It's not just annoying; it's deceptive, and in B2B, where trust is currency, it erodes the whole ecosystem.

B) We have worked too hard, and for too long, for people just flat out lying to minimise the opportunity for everyone involved in Detected. I could run fancy marketing campaigns to push this message, but this is free and I know the right people will see it.

In this piece, I'll pull back the curtain on the most common deceptions in KYB. I'll use real-world examples (anonymised, of course) to show just some of the many lies told.

Saying "Detected doesn't lie" isn't enough; I am always very willing to get on a live demo of the product and share what we can do. Also, if there is ever anything we have said that isn’t accurate, I would be the first to own it.

I’m going to cover 12 different areas which are important when considering a compliance platform. Of course our ‘heritage’ is KYB, broader than KYC by default- which is why we win V the KYC businesses who are trying to retrofit a platform into their proposition. Our KYC flows are now live, so we are truly a compliance platform - that reminds me, we should probably do a press release which massively exaggerates the capability… I’ll put it on my to-do list.

The End-to-End KYB Process and Where the Lies Hide

Fundamentally, the KYB process boils down to a handful of steps, but providers love to inflate their role in it. At its core, it's about gathering, verifying, and monitoring business data to make informed decisions. But too many vendors stretch the truth to fit their pitch, often blending point solutions into what is essentially a ‘facade of completeness’.

Digital Customer Onboarding Portal

Lie: "Fully customisable, no-code portal ready out of the box."

Reality: Many point solutions claim this but deliver clunky forms that require heavy dev work to integrate, are just a light questionnaire or are simply a ‘flow builder’ they have partnered with.

Best in class? It should be native, intuitive, and truly plug-and-play- no asterisks. It has to be configurable by use case, customer type or location. It has to be modules which are embedded in the personalised journeys and the modules cant just be different forms - they have to be everything from ID Verification and UBO Declaration to Document Uploads and Director Confirmation. Fully white labellable UI or available via Headless APIs.

Entity Verification (Business)

Lie: "Global registry integration covering 200+ countries with instant UBO discovery." - honestly, the amount of times I have seen this and just laughed - it suggests UBOs are instantly available in 200+ countries, Reality: Vendors hype "worldwide coverage" but actually the problem here is more that, if you assume connections with the market leaders like Dun & Bradstreet + regional vendors like Asia Verify as a given, the data held on state registers or country registers is varied in the best cases and crap in others so it just doesn’t solve the problem.

Best in class? Connect to the best, not the most data sources. A combination of global vendors with varying depth of data and reach, local/regional vendors and those who focus specifically on access to registry data. Key, as I see it, is not marketing this as the headline because orchestrating data vendors and continually reviewing who is connected is the minimum expectation for a platform

Individual Identity Verification (KYC)

Lie: "Instant, seamless ID verification for any individual worldwide with 99.9% accuracy."

Reality: Plenty of vendors boast about flawless, one-click verification, but in truth, they often rely on outdated databases or are just built on dated technology that can’t perform to the required standard.

Best in class? Beyond optionality for video verification or liveness detection and having excellent global coverage, I have to be honest, I can’t really see + or - 5% how pure Identity Document Verification vendors differentiate. The key is using non-document checks, social media checks and any other blend of relevant sources to build a full picture of an individual. Optionality and configurability is the win here, not 0.000001% marginal gain claims on match rates.

Enhanced Due-Diligence & Additional Checks

Lie: "Comprehensive EDD suite that uncovers hidden risks in seconds across all jurisdictions."

Reality: Additional unstructured data which is added to a business profile for manual review.

Best in class? I think about ‘tools for teams’ and this is a great example. An EDD team should receive automated triggers for deeper probes, with the heavy lifting from UBO discovery to relationship mapping completed and analysed. This team should then have the tools to complete further research and connect directly with customers to run cases to completion.

Sanctions, PEP & Adverse-Media Screening

Lie: "Real-time screening against 1,000+ global lists with zero false positives."

Reality: Vendors love to tout massive list coverage, but the reality is bloated databases lead to alert fatigue from irrelevant hits, and "real-time" often means delayed batch processing, especially for adverse media which varies wildly in quality and freshness.

Best in class? Focus on curated, high-quality sources like OFAC, EU lists, and premium media aggregators, combined with AI for fuzzy matching and context-aware filtering. It has to be configurable for risk thresholds, with ongoing updates and audit trails. Native integration ensures it's not just a partner feed but a smart system that evolves, emphasising accuracy over volume- because honesty about potential gaps builds trust. Directors and UBOs, either from data sources or declared, should be automatically screened and run through the risk score.

Risk Assessment & Automated Decisioning

Lie: "AI-powered risk scoring that automates 100% of decisions with regulatory compliance guaranteed."

Reality: This one's a classic vaporware pitch- many platforms claim full automation, but their "AI" is often rigid rules-based logic that chokes on complex cases, leading to non-compliant overrides or ignored nuances like behavioral patterns.

Best in class? The platform should continually score risks based on a single customer view, with configurable rules per jurisdiction or customer segment. It should support straight-through processing for low-risk cases while flagging others for review or automating actions to begin enhanced due diligence.

Compliance Agents

Lie: "24/7 virtual agents handling all compliance queries instantly and accurately."

Reality: Sounds futuristic, but most are glorified chatbots scripted from templates, stumbling on nuanced regs or requiring escalation, and they're rarely trained on evolving laws, turning them into liability risks.

Best in class? AI-driven agents integrated with your full compliance dataset for contextual responses. They should handle everything from Documents, Screenings, Submissions or Reviews by role or scenario. They should have the option to be paired with human experts for complex issues to avoid overhyping autonomy (for now).

Workflow & Case Management

Lie: "End-to-end workflow automation that eliminates manual intervention forever."

Reality: ‘Case Management’ in this industry is usually one of these 3 things. A simple approvals dashboard which shows the data, an over complicated legacy beast that lacks flexibility or a dashboard which looks beautiful but doesn’t deliver on the day to day operational requirements of compliance teams.

Best in class? Intuitive, no-code orchestration with pre-built templates for common processes, but flexible for custom paths by use case or regulation. Modules cover assignment of checklists to specific teams based on risk scores or customer types, SLAs, escalations, and collaboration tools, all natively integrated.

Ongoing Monitoring, Alerts & Refresh

Lie: "Continuous, real-time monitoring and alerting with automatic refresh for lifelong compliance."

Reality: To be honest this one isn’t all that hard to do so if a company says they keep information updated, they probably do - the fail is when the updated data doesn’t alert correctly or trigger compliance workflows.

Best in class? Event-driven monitoring from multiple sources, with automated refresh cycles tailored by risk profile or jurisdiction. It includes triggers for everything from sanctions updates to adverse events, with configurable notifications per team or alert type. Native to the platform for seamless data flow and connected to ‘Actions’ which trigger re-credentialing outreach to customers.

Reporting & Analytics

Lie: "Custom dashboards delivering actionable insights in real-time for every stakeholder."

Reality: Flashy claims as usual, but most deliver canned reports with delayed data or require heavy customisation, lacking depth for regulatory audits or trend analysis. Most businesses export from tools and into internal BI products.

Best in class? Interactive, role-based dashboards with drill-down capabilities, pulling from unified data for metrics like pass rates or alert trends. Modules support everything from MI reports to audit logs, which demonstrate which elements were powered by which providers and when, configurable by user or compliance need.

Integration & Data Network

Lie: "Combines risk and fraud signals from over 2,150 financial institutions"

Reality: The sheer number claimed often means shallow connectors that demand custom dev work or suffer from latency, not the "seamless" utopia promised.

Best in class? Focus on quality integrations with key partners and build securely, with real-time sync. A robust data network of vetted partners for enriched info, configurable by workflow. Headless APIs ensure flexibility without lock-in, and vendors should be upfront about supported systems. Ability to rapidly integrate and normalise alternative sources is essential.

Security, Privacy & Compliance by Design

Lie: "Bank-grade security and full GDPR compliance out of the box, unbreakable."

Reality: It is so easy to throw sentences like ‘bank-grade security’ into marketing material, but there are vendors who say this stuff and don’t have basic ISO.

Best in class? Baked-in from the ground up: encryption, access controls, and privacy features, aligned with standards like ISO 27001 and SOC 2. Modules for consent management and breach response, configurable by region. Cloud based, with multi region redundancy. Available via secure APIs, with regular audits. So that’s the lies, the reality and what best in class looks like in the 12 different areas which are important when considering a compliance platform. But what happens if you do lie? Well, it varies from the reputational impact of being an executive that is ‘known to lie’ through to some more quantifiable issues.

There is a regulatory reckoning coming as the US and UK crack down on these claims. As of August 2025, the heat is on. In the US, the FTC Act and Lanham Act don't exempt B2B- false claims about software features are deceptive practices, with penalties up to $53,088 per violation and competitor lawsuits for damages.

The counterargument to all of this of course, is a little bit of exaggeration harmless?

I worked in eCommerce for a long time before Detected and vendors exaggerated their capability, but a content management system which powered a bikini website claiming they can load images faster than they can is different to a compliance platform claiming it can find and identify any UBOs in any country. "Everyone does it- it's just marketing" is not good enough in any industry, but particularly here.

Why Detected Doesn't Lie- and Why It Matters

To be completely honest, we didn’t know enough about the industry to lie in the early days and it stuck. I’ve explained before that this business is truly a ‘saw a gap with fresh eyes and set about fixing it’ story, we have literally just spent 5 years asking Compliance teams what they want and building it. There’s also just simply doing the right thing and the obvious risk of letting big customers down and getting a reputation for not having the product claimed.

The data coverage ‘we have’ isn’t ours, it's the aggregate of what our partners deliver and we a) share the coverage with complete transparency and b) make it clear that we can add new partners if required /or if a customer has a data partner they prefer.

We do however have truly global coverage, with workflows which request customer information for missing data across jurisdictions, backed by the best sources like Dun & Bradstreet. We also create unique data which is derived from the interoperability between verified sources, customer data and customer behaviour which is incredibly valuable.

Our all-in-one platform? It's real: we provide a fully white labelled User Interface with dynamic application journeys that adapt in real-time, automation that can support both straight-through processing as well as automated EDD with our ‘Actions’ function, verification blending KYB/KYC seamlessly, screening with refined fuzzy logic to cut false positives, workflows via a genuine no-code builder with automated escalations and checklists, monitoring that's event-driven and automated, security via SOC 2 Type II certification and end-to-end encryption, integrations that plug into CRMs without custom code (our Salesforce App for example), and our BI dashboard with comprehensive risk insights.

So yeah, I’d honestly say we have the KYB platform that can perform across the most industry verticals and to the highest standard of any available. To the extent that I would welcome a head-to-head live demo with the CEO of any other business to run some live compliance scenarios and see how they perform. If we did come out second best, fine - but I am very willing to be completely transparent, which is the whole point of this article.

I’ve written before about the move to platform rather than data in this space, and as the demand increases so does the prize and as a result so do the claims for those providing the supply.