Written by: Timothy W. Casey, Group Manager for Escrow Services, Corporate Trust
Imagine that your law firm and an important client have been working for weeks on an M&A transaction. It’s now late on Saturday, just a matter of days before the deal is expected to close and the need for an escrow has arisen. You need to find an escrow provider that can offer ease and speed as it relates to the required collection of Know Your Customer (KYC) information and the delivery of a standard escrow agreement.
It’s quite a common scenario. When it comes up, clients and law firms don’t want to risk delays to the closing of a complex transaction after so many weeks’ worth of work. At the same time, banks must follow regulations and perform due diligence before opening an escrow or other accounts, including detailed KYC checks. We at BNY Mellon Corporate Trust are making this process more efficient and it can now be completed on a smartphone.
The launch of Escrow Advantage now makes it easy for clients and law firms to fill in the required KYC data after completing an initial and one-time registration process. This new solution replaces a time-intensive and manual process and offers the ability to initiate an escrow relationship in minutes as well as creates a more secure mechanism for the collection of highly confidential information.
Once you are self-registered on our platform, and your relationship manager has initiated you a task, you can begin filling in the required KYC data at your convenience. In our scenario, typically, clients and law firms would have to wait to have a manual KYC form e-mailed to them, often not until Monday morning, a process that results in frequent correspondence and the need for several rounds of clarifications and additional required information.
In the world of escrow, law firms and clients want ease and speed so that they have more time to spend on the transaction details and not on dealing with their escrow provider. It can be as simple as these four steps:
- The law firm contacts BNY Mellon to establish an escrow relationship;
- They register with BNY Mellon’s platform, accessing a digital KYC “smart form” and a copy of the standard escrow agreement;
- They complete the KYC form with or on behalf of the client, and
- They submit the KYC form and associated required documents for review and acceptance.
Once a user is registered on our system, the process to initiate an escrow account can take minutes, not days.
In our imaginary scenario above, envision making that realization about escrow. Maybe you’re at a business dinner. Instead of panicking over the impending deadline, you reach out to a relationship manager at BNY Mellon to ask to be signed up with Escrow Advantage. The next business day your relationship manager initiates your one-time registration, allowing you to self-register, access the platform, and begin filling in the required KYC data. You can start the process online anytime, and help to ensure that there will be no delay to the closing. More and more, that is exactly the kind of digital experience you should expect.
For more information about BNY Mellon Escrow AdvantageSM, please visit our website.
