About Client

ACML Capital Markets Limited is a company founded by Ahmedabad Stock Exchange Limited in 2000. ACML is a proactively managed trading & clearing member in the Cash and F&O segment of Bombay Stock Exchange Limited (BSE), the cash and F&O segment of the National Stock Exchange of India Limited (NSE), and is also the depository participant of the National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL). 

Ahmedabad Stock Exchange Limited (ASEL) is the second oldest Stock Exchange in India after the Bombay Stock Exchange Limited (BSE). It was formed in the nineteenth century in the year 1894. SEBI in order to ensure survival and to facilitate the growth of regional stock exchanges and their members, allowed them to float subsidiary companies that could acquire the memberships of premier stock exchanges BSE & NSE.

ACML: Grappling with Challenges

In today’s rapidly evolving financial landscape, brokerage firms find themselves grappling with a host of challenges when burdened by legacy IT systems. Legacy systems, often outdated and inflexible, can hinder a firm’s ability to compete effectively in the digital age. Here are some key issues that a brokerage firm may encounter due to legacy IT systems:

1. Inefficient Operations: Legacy systems are typically less efficient and require manual workarounds. This inefficiency can slow down transaction processing, order execution, and customer service, leading to delays and errors. 
2. Scalability Limitations: Legacy systems may lack the scalability needed to handle increasing trading volumes or adapt to new market opportunities. This can result in performance bottlenecks during peak trading hours.
3. Limited Integration: Legacy systems may not easily integrate with modern technologies and third-party applications. This restricts the firm’s ability to adopt new tools, analytics, and data sources critical for informed decision-making.
4. Compliance Challenges: Meeting regulatory compliance standards becomes increasingly difficult as regulations evolve. Legacy systems may lack the agility to adapt quickly to changing compliance requirements.
5. Customer Experience: Outdated IT systems can impact the overall customer experience. Slow response times, outdated user interfaces, and a lack of real-time data can frustrate clients and drive them to seek more technologically advanced brokerage services.
6. Competitive Disadvantage: Brokerage firms with legacy systems may struggle to keep up with competitors who have invested in modern, agile IT infrastructure. This puts them at a disadvantage in terms of innovation and service offerings.

ACML approached KeenExperts Solutions with a set of challenges they were facing in the regular functioning and liaising at their firm.

• Time taken for onboarding the customer: It’s imperative that ACML reduce the overall time taken to onboard the customer and allow him to trade with them.
• Validating Client Information: They need to check whether all of their customer’s documents are in a certain order and validate the account opener’s name with the submitted documents. This was troublesome when they had more than 250 brokers and each broker had people visiting them to open their account with the firm, which must adhere to SEBI guidelines before opening a trading account in a depository on the Broker’s request.
• Untrackable Records: In the pool of thousands of account holders’ files stored manually, it was really painful for authorities to track certain records, especially during audits.

All in all, manually storing, validating, and retrieving information was a challenging task for brokers and also for the management of the company. Similarly, keeping track of corruption practices was way too difficult with the traditional system.

How KeenExpert Helped

Starting with consultation services, the minds and makers of KeenExperts proposed the best suitable plan for the digitization of ACML’s traditional system. Following this, we started working on KYC software development with pre-decided milestones and the final product served the purpose,

ACML Management

Management was committed, they were fully on board with the idea of digitization. At one point in time, they stopped manual processing to push for automation.

• Real-time Dashboard – gives status on customer applications and takes decisive actions for the depository.
• User management systems permit granular control over the activities of each registered user.
• Backup: Daily automated data backup.

ACML Staff

ACML staff was apprehensive but supportive, they did the UAT and then ran the manual and automation in parallel and ultimately switched to the automated system.

• Maker Checker System: a document verification system at the depository.
• Email/Message Verification: Rapid customer application verification through email or messages.
• Consent Affirmation: Once the application is processed successfully, the customer receives an email with an attached PDF for them to sign. They sign the document and send it back to the broker as a response to the same email.
• Notifications: The client, AP, or depository gets notified at each processing phase.

ACML Intermediaries

Intermediaries were the most challenging part of the solution, they were not ready to adapt to the new system. They don’t want to get away with manual systems.

• Training: – Onboarding training and hand-holding
• Hand Holding – rapid customer application verification through email or messages.

Results: ACML’s success with Online KYC

With online KYC, it became remarkably easy to satisfy regulatory obligations, make informed decisions, and prevent businesses from laundering the proceeds of financial crime or corrupt practices. Also, the firm presents authentic and reliable information along with the identification of any known or unknown violations by a potential customer and helps to make versed

settlements using the most stringent user validation process. 

Online KYC is a blend of state-of-the-art technology solutions and a remarkably talented pool of experts to simplify your customer screening and system monitoring process using state-of-the-art technology blended with human expertise.

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