Core provider Finastra is streamlining the onboarding experience for its banking customers, thanks to a new partnership with AIO, a Tel Aviv-based fintech that automates the document-collection and -verification process.

London-based Finastra has integrated AIO’s product into its “FusionFabric.cloud” platform, the company’s open developer platform and app store. Finastra, which works with 90 of the world’s top 100 banks, is leveraging AIO’s platform to allow its customers to automate the document-collection and -verification processes needed to satisfy “Know Your Customer,” (KYC) regulations.

The integration coincides with an estimated 300% year-over-year spike in demand for automated solutions within financial institutions’ commercial lending operations, according to Nelson Flores, director of product management for Finastra’s commercial lending solutions.

“We definitely are going into a jumpstarted age of automation technology,” Flores said, adding that pre-COVID, demand for automation technology among Finastra’s smaller client base was relatively low. “Probably around 10% to 15% of our clients were thinking about the automation process. Now, it’s doubled that; it’s tripled that.”

Automating the customer onboarding process has been identified by industry executives as a pain point that can be improved with automation. During recent panel sessions at the Banking Automation Summit, Silicon Valley Bank’s Denny Boyle, the bank’s managing director of fintech, said automating the client onboarding process is a top focus for the bank. Meanwhile Wells Fargo’s Allysun Fleming, treasury management head of client experiences, said the $1.92 trillion bank is prioritizing the automation of KYC and anti-money laundering processes in 2021.

AIO leverages a machine learning algorithm to verify the source of a document and uses metadata to identify suspicious outliers in the information. The startup’s algorithm, for instance, can extract 1,500 different attributes about the structure and coding of IRS tax return slips, a form of metadata the company verifies against, said AIO Co-Founder and CEO Yoram Bechler.

AIO’s process automates the manual cross-checking process many banks operate on today, which can take between two and 12 weeks and cost up to $6,000 per business customer, said Oded Israeli, AIO’s chief marketing officer.

AIO launched in 2019 and is currently undergoing three pilots with global banks based in the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific, according to Bechler.