KYC – more than a compliance exercise

AUGUST 2026 | A thoughtful approach to keeping customer information accurate, secure and up to date.

If KYC has found its way onto your project list recently, you’re certainly not alone.

Over the past year, it’s come up in more and more of our client conversations. Some mutual banks are already well into their projects. Others are still working through what their approach should look like. But almost everyone seems to be asking similar questions.

And there are quite a few questions to answer.

At its heart, KYC is a regulatory obligation. Under Australia’s Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing framework, financial institutions need to know who their customers are and keep relevant information up to date.

That may sound straightforward enough. But once you start thinking about how to put it into practice, it quickly becomes a much bigger conversation.

Who needs to be contacted first? Should every customer follow the same process? How many reminders should you send? Which channels will work best? What happens when someone doesn’t respond? And how do you ask a customer to confirm personal information without making the request feel suspicious?

There’s no single answer—and that’s probably one of the most interesting things we’ve seen.

Every mutual bank is approaching KYC a little differently. Some are beginning with selected groups of customers and working through them in stages. Others are thinking about an ongoing journey, where customers are brought in at the right time based on particular dates, circumstances or changes in their information.

The journey itself can also take many forms. It might begin with an email or letter, followed by a series of carefully timed reminders across different channels. The wording may change along the way too—starting gently, then becoming clearer about deadlines and what may happen if the customer doesn’t take action.

Then there’s the scam challenge.

Customers are regularly reminded not to click unexpected links or share personal information. So when their bank suddenly asks them to confirm their details, a little hesitation is completely understandable. The way the request is explained—and how customers can check that it’s genuine— becomes a really important part of the journey.

There’s plenty happening behind the scenes as well. Data needs to identify the right customers and move them through the correct steps. Frontline teams need to know what’s happening when customers call or visit a branch. Reporting needs to show who has been contacted, who has responded and what still needs attention.

That’s why KYC is much more than a piece of compliance comms. It’s a project that brings together compliance, data, communications, digital channels, frontline teams and reporting.

Spark can help bring those pieces together—from sharing ideas and mapping out the journey to developing and delivering the one-off or automated comms and supporting reporting.

If KYC is sitting on your project list, we’d be very happy to talk through what the journey could look like for your organisation.