Customer Software Development for The ID Register

About Ipes and The ID Register

After the success of the fully bespoke build of Capital Tracker, a cutting-edge cloud enterprise application developed for managing Private Equity funds, Ipes continued their longstanding relationship with Transparity on the build of The ID Register (now its own company). The ID Register is an online investor onboarding platform that helps make key processes such as fund launches faster, easier and more cost-effective. It centralises fund subscription information, conducts Due Diligence and Know Your Customer (KYC), and also provides Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and Common Reporting Standard (CRS) tax reporting to the relevant jurisdiction.

The challenge

In 2015 the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority stated, “…we recognise that firms have to deal with greater reporting requirements and meet higher regulatory standards. In order to enable effective competition and promote innovation, it is important that technologies that help firms better manage regulatory requirements and reduce compliance costs are supported.”

Ipes (now Apex) envisioned an online platform that would enable individuals to create one complete KYC and FATCA profile and share it securely with their lawyers and fund managers, making Compliance Due Diligence (CDD) quicker, easier and more cost-effective. This idea for The ID Register was born in response to demands from the legal and the PE Fund community, who were frustrated with the lengthy CDD process.

The solution

The technology behind it is primarily ASP.NET MVC, C#, SQL Server, TSQL, AngularJS, Bootstrap, SSRS and is a modern responsive web application hosted on Azure. It has many functional areas such as:

• User Management, Permission Profiles, Login via LinkedIn, Invites , Notifications
• Profiles (Entity Types, Entity Details, Lead Entities, Ownership and Control, Invites)
• CDD
• Evidence requirements, document storage and certification
• Risk Rating
• Sanctions Screening
• Billing
• FATCA and CRS (Classification, Registration, Investigation, Reporting)
• Universal Investor Subscription (a very detailed questionnaire)
• API access for external tools and partners
• Administration subsite (Administration Tasks for ID Register staff, Due Diligence Triggers, Permissions).

DevOps: The development involved DevOps through automated unit tests and integration tests developed using Specflow and Selenium, and fully automated systems deployment using Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates and deployment pipelines. Once the system was live and operational DevOps continued as our DevOps engineers made fixes and enhancements to the live system using a very short test and release cycle.

The outcome

Since its launch in 2016, The ID Register has evolved to become a central industry utility for the private Equity sector It makes the investor onboarding process quicker through the Universal Subscription questionnaire (USQ). It works by allowing users to create and share complete Due Diligence profiles and evidence via a secure online portal for free, eliminating the need for multiple paper forms that all ask for similar information in slightly different ways. The paperless verification system uses real time sanctions screening against global sanctions and Personal Equity Plan lists to provide a complete live Due Diligence profile. It has the ability to combine data with multi-jurisdictional reporting for FATCA and Common Reporting Standard (CRS), delivering an efficient, cost effective package that will report the right information, at the right time, to the right jurisdiction.

Further, it connects the user’s profile to anyone who needs his/her KYC such as banks, legal firms, fund managers and other counterparties worldwide. In utilising this technology, The ID Register’s team of analysts ensure that the user’s KYC profile is kept up to date without any further intervention. The ID Register team work in alliance with other professionals to ensure that each profile remains compliant with FATCA and CRS legislation.

It is not an overstatement to say that The ID Register is nothing short of a revolution for the investor onboarding process in the private funds market.

In response to regulatory change this onboarding process had become overly complex. With the ID Register there is now a straightforward solution.

Speaking at the product launch in October 2016, Tim Andrews who heads The ID Register said, “The ID Register brings together Ipes’ Fund Administration experience with FATCA and CRS expertise of tax partners such as KPMG, enabling financial firms and individuals to create a full KYC and FATCA profile and then connect it to their investments, lawyers or bankers.” He continued, “Updates are published to each connection instantly with minimal effort. Continuously screened against global sanctions and PEP lists, each client profile is also assessed against FATCA and CRS and fully supported by an expert team. Firms are then able to review the live CDD status of all their clients and investors and help fulfil their FATCA classification, registration and reporting obligations paper-free world wide and at any time.”

Andrew Chalmers, Transparity, General Manager added, “Software engineering companies such as Transparity are helping to drive the finance sector’s innovation and are essentially transforming the way business is conducted, by bringing into reality the ideas and dreams of entrepreneurs and innovators in the field such as Tim Andrews at The ID Register. Custom software development is at the heart of fintech and makes systems like this one a reality. With our experience in this sector we are helping to solve real problems for finance sector firms.”

To learn more about the ID Register you can visit the website here: www.theidregister.com