Leonard Curtis has partnered with Nivo to introduce an AI-powered know your customer and anti-money laundering onboarding process for its funding clients.
The workflow uses an AI assistant to support client communication, secure information collection, data enrichment and report compilation, while human specialists remain responsible for judgement, risk review and escalation.
The firms said the service is aimed at one of the more persistent administrative challenges in specialist lending, where document collection, accuracy checks and re-keying can slow the progress of commercial finance cases.
According to Nivo, its discovery work with lenders and brokers found that almost all firms at proposal stage reported right-first-time packaging rates of 50% or worse. Chasing clients for documents, checking accuracy and re-keying information were cited as the main sources of wasted time.
Through the Leonard Curtis mobile app, Nivo collects the initial information required and enriches it with external data from Companies House, CreditSafe, company websites and open web sources.
The system identifies directors and shareholders, pre-populates the KYC form for applicant review, and routes cases into internal risk review and compliance where required.
High-risk cases are escalated to human specialists with full context, while routine cases move through a faster workflow.
Leonard Curtis said the approach would reduce manual back and forth, paper forms, re-keying and repeated follow-ups, while keeping human oversight in place where judgement is needed.
Ellie Woodhouse, director of funding operations at Leonard Curtis, said: “The appeal of this project is straightforward. KYC and AML onboarding is typically time-intensive involving repeated requests, manual checks and significant administration.
“By using AI to handle that groundwork in a secure and controlled environment, we free our team up to concentrate on delivering for our clients and building relationships, focusing on the areas where human expertise adds the most value.
“We acknowledge this process can be challenging and time consuming for clients, our solution focusses on enhancing their experience which is a key priority.”
Matthew Elliott, co-founder and chief commercial officer at Nivo, added: “We’ve worked with more than 100 brands in financial services and we keep seeing the same problem. Documents and information rarely arrive right the first time, and skilled people spend huge amounts of energy fixing that.
“This is the kind of work AI should be doing. The assistant acts like a team member on the case, gathering information, checking what comes back, chasing what is missing, pulling together external data, and handing a completed KYC output back to the team.”
