Deloitte Luxembourg announced that it has developed ‘Kick Start’ (KYCStart), which is a new blockchain proof-of-concept in order to perform customer onboarding.

According to the reports by Finextra, the blockchain PoC model aims to onboard customers across various platforms and organizations by introducing extensible Digital Identities and the forward-looking concept of regulated KYC Added-Value Service Providers.

“With this proof of concept and related eco-system, we demonstrate the benefits of using blockchain and smart contract to considerably reduce the costs of one of the most important burden of our institutional clients: KYC and customer on-boarding,” Thibault Chollet, Blockchain Leader at Deloitte Luxembourg, explained.

In the blockchain model, the KYC Added-Value Services Providers are regulated entities, authorized to conduct KYC (Know-Your-Customer) services for user communities that are willing to enter in business relationships with various businesses such as banks, insurance companies, funds, asset servicers, among others.

The model will enable customers to directly control to whom they share their personal information and documents, making a track of these authorizations in the distributed ledger with the help of smart contracts. The blockchain PoC showcases the power of Deloitte Labs to create technological and functional bricks that can be reused by other member firms globally.

“Providers can now rely on specialized entities to delegate and mutualize the KYC and AML/CTF procedures, reducing the cost of both onboarding and ongoing monitoring,” Maxime Heckel, Director at Deloitte Luxembourg specializing in KYC services, stated.

Heckel added that the accounting giant will be providing “KYC as-a-Service” to financial institutions as of mid-2017 and that the KYCStart will be one of the proposed counterparty on-boarding channels for the service.

Deloitte Luxembourg will be presenting the blockchain PoC (KYCStart) during the ICT Spring on 9-10 May.