Can I Just Outsource All My KYC and Onboarding?

Someone recently asked me if they could outsource all their KYC and onboarding tasks for their new business idea to me (or someone else I could recommend) and I did not think it was such a great idea. I strongly feel that FinTech or any other customer-facing startups should keep their onboarding and KYC processes in-house, at least during the first several years.

Why I'm against outsourcing your KYC and onboarding tasks? - Here are my main reasons:

• When you are a new or still emerging business, all the feedback you get from your first customers while onboarding them is gold for refining your product, and you need to listen to this feedback carefully with your eyes and ears wide open. This is how you learn that your product has glitches or that your links don't work 😉 and that your app has a few bugs. You will also be able to get a feel about who are your attracting, what kind of questions they have and what is missing in your product features, website information, or brand messaging.
• Onboarding is not a mechanical process of simply getting people in and reviewing their documents at the lowest possible cost. Onboarding is a continuous learning process that must be integrated into your customer lifecycle - learning about who your customers really are, what do they want, where do they come from and what their expectations are. If you don't know who they are, you will have a hard time activating them, engaging with them or making them listen to your messaging or transacting frequently. 
• Yes, large companies offering the same type of services over years, with proven value proposition and well documented workflows can benefit from outsourcing of some of their compliance, onboarding or customer support functions, simply because they are well past the intense learning curve and fine-tuning stage. For startups, onboarding  and KYC is an essential part of the proof of concept validation and, in my personal view, one of the most strategic processes. Why? - because it's not just about the customers you managed to onboard, it's more about all the 50%-70% of the website or app visitors who started and never finished their registration process, because something was missing or not to their liking. If you don't get your conversions right, it can make or break your business.

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