OUR PARTNERS

Cascade

Discover our new series: “Navigating success through strategic partnerships"

At Neterium, we take pride in our strategic partnerships with great Digital Platforms, Financial Services providers, and Solutions vendors using our API to add advanced screening capability to their platforms and solutions.

With regulatory requirements increasing, Excel and a stand-alone name-screening tool are more than inadequate for AML/KYC needs. Unable to find a suitable market solution, Cascade was born in March 2020, offering an affordable platform to digitalise and organise client data with a customisable Risk-Based Approach for AML/KYC compliance, and established a partnership with Neterium from the outset.

Join us as we engage in an in-depth conversation with Cascade’s co-founders Maciej Waloszyk and Declan O'Hannrachain, who just celebrated Cascade’s 5th anniversary to explore the dynamics of Neterium and Cascade partnership.

- Can you introduce yourself and provide some insights about Cascade and how the relationship started with Neterium?

We are a Luxembourg-based scale-up offering a complete end-to-end AML platform with an emphasis on the proper execution of Risk Based Approach and ongoing risk monitoring. Coming from the investment fund industry which is supervised by one of the most stringent regulators in the world, we saw the absence of a tool that would allow us to perform all our AML-related duties in one place. Far too many firms are still using stand-alone name screening systems, which are detached from the risk allocation process and require permanent data juggling. When we came across Neterium, we knew instantly at Cascade that integrating their tool and partnering with them would help our “go to” market strategy but more importantly, allow us to offer name-screening features as a part of the execution of a risk-based approach, helping to heavily automate the process.

- The strength of your platform lies in its horizontal integration, encompassing KYC management and the registry, all within a single interface. How do you concretely use the Neterium API to integrate screening directly into your solution’s workflow while accessing all the data providers supported by Neterium?

Our key advantage is that we properly structure client-related data, and we allow our clients to execute all AML duties towards clients, investors, counter-parties, and assets within the same system. This gives us a critical strength – Cascade provides a ‘live’ view on each client file. It takes seconds to understand if you are missing any identification documents, whether you have identified the UBOs, have done the name screening, answered the AML Questionnaire, verified the Geographical Risk, allocated the risk level, and have any expired documents, etc. When it comes to the Neterium API, the main element we liked most was the existing connectivity to several leading data vendors. In our home market, every firm under AML laws was already equipped with a name screening system, typically provided by one of the global vendors. The ability of our clients to continue using their existing data vendor during the transition to Cascade made onboarding smoother and minimized the challenges associated with change management.

- Has the significant increase in sanctions since the Russian invasion of Ukraine affected your work and the objectives of your Cascade’s solution?

The Russian invasion of Ukraine did not affect our work, the platform, or our objectives. From day one Cascade enforced a daily name screening of all relevant types of business relationships, that do not cost clients anything extra in terms of fees, therefore on the name screening side we were imposing maximum protection contrary to many name screening systems that do it less frequently or charge per screening. The Russian invasion of Ukraine increased the frequency of sanction list updates; therefore it just made our solution more attractive. On top of that Cascade digitalises and automates the process of geographical risk assessment, which most firms still maintain in Excel. Thanks to that, you can determine all clients and connections at any level to for instance Russia or any other sanctioned jurisdiction with one click.

- What potential future developments do you foresee in screening, and how will this impact the clients you serve?

We are looking at AI/ML which isn't such a surprise. There is still a lot that can be done in terms of the reduction and treatment of false positive hits and in more general terms – analysis of the screening results. With the current generative language models, it is already possible to provide a narrative against the name screening analysis, allowing teams to save time and help formulate better conclusions.