Podcast Summary

Fintech Insider Podcast by 11:FS

Episode 1014: Insights – How do you onboard a borderless business?
Date: November 13, 2025
Host: Benjamin Ensor
Guests:

• Ivan Zhesnevsky (Founder & CEO, 3S Money)
• Rudolf Jaeger (Senior Product Lead, OpenPaid)
• Emma Lindley (Founder, Women in Identity; ID and fraud consultant)

Episode Overview

This episode delves into the unique challenges and evolving solutions related to onboarding business clients in an increasingly borderless world. The expert panel explores why business KYB (Know Your Business) remains far more complex and frictional than consumer KYC, especially for mid-sized, cross-border businesses that fall between the cracks of existing banking paradigms. Discussions touch on tangled regulatory requirements, fragmented global data, and whether emerging technologies and new industry mindsets can finally untangle KYB pain points.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why is Business Onboarding So Challenging?

[06:33]

• Business onboarding means identifying not an individual but a complex legal entity, often with multiple stakeholders across jurisdictions.
• The process involves:
  • Verifying the legal existence of companies across myriad registries
  • Identifying directors, shareholders, and ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs)—sometimes across borders
  • Assessing legitimate business activity, not just identity
• As Ivan puts it:

  “We’re dealing with a legal entity … more than one person. We need to identify who is behind who is running it.” (06:33, Ivan Zhesnevsky)

[07:31]

• Emma adds:

  “When you’re doing KYB, you have to verify that the company is a real company... You then have to verify the directors and the shareholders and then, dependent on which jurisdiction, you have to get to the ultimate beneficial owner. And the challenge with that is the UBO can often be in a completely different country, as can the directors and shareholders.” (07:31, Emma Lindley)

[09:44]

• Rudolf highlights the limits of rule-based onboarding:

  "[Onboarding a business] is a discovery journey... It is very hard to put into a rule set... there’s still the inevitable element of the trust-building and discovery that is very hard to automate." (09:44, Rudolf Jaeger)

2. The Compliance Mindset and Its Challenges

[11:24]

• The panel stresses how legacy, risk-averse compliance mindsets, often based on outdated nationality or jurisdictional red flags, prevent fair, effective onboarding:
  • Overreliance on “country risk” can result in blanket distrust, even when legitimate businesses are trying to operate cross-border.

  “We’re trying to use old risk assessment tools for modern world… It puts lots of different people off the financial services industry and actually prevents them from making money and doing good business.” (11:24, Ivan Zhesnevsky)

3. Data Fragmentation & Registry Problems

[15:18], [22:18], [42:18]

• Scarcity and inconsistency of global registry data present core bottlenecks; many jurisdictions lack accessible, authoritative, or trustworthy business registries.

• Emma:

  “One of the challenges … particularly […] is the availability of authoritative data sources, particularly when you go to some of these jurisdictions … tax havens don’t have the authoritative data source available for organizations to verify against.” (15:18, Emma Lindley)

• Rudolf:

  “There is still a huge opportunity for unification of KYB data standards and data formats.” (21:31, Rudolf Jaeger)

• Emma wishes for:

  “If the registry data was made available… having a license to be able to access that data, if you’re a fintech or if you’re one of these ID companies and that data is made available and the UBO information is made available … I think that would really make the biggest impact.” (22:18, Emma Lindley)

4. Building Trust (and Reusing Insights)

[25:20]

• Ivan proposes an industry-wide shift from individual, siloed verification to leveraging trust and shared data between financial service providers, akin to open banking:

  “If we could rely on, on each other, that would greatly help to identify these businesses and people behind them and everything else.” (25:20, Ivan Zhesnevsky)

• Emma adds:

  “In the UK the regulation does allow you to do [this] for individuals … this kind of idea of reusable digital identity … but we don’t have it for businesses.” (27:17, Emma Lindley)

5. User Experience: Transparency, Communication & Analyst Tools

[30:10], [32:25]

• User experience improvements can ease anxiety for clients—clear instructions, immediate feedback, and transparent communication are keys to smoother onboarding.
• Rudolf:

  “If your company is technology first and is investing in the onboarding technology, you can automate a lot of those checks…” (30:17, Rudolf Jaeger)

• Ivan:

  “The whole user journey … is about managing client’s expectation, what happens next … as long as we at least communicate properly with a client … that’s a big win.” (32:25, Ivan Zhesnevsky)

6. Regulatory and Jurisdictional Nuances

[33:51]

• Varying regulatory requirements across jurisdictions impact onboarding strictness and time.
• Jurisdictions often compete to offer simpler processes to attract businesses:

  “Finding a way from a regulatory perspective … to make some of this stuff more like a, take a real risk based approach rather than it being, well, you know, a bit more blunt force trauma … will actually attract more businesses to be domiciled with them.” (33:51, Emma Lindley)

7. Staggered Onboarding vs. Get-It-All-Upfront Approach

[37:44]

• Rudolf and Ivan debate whether it’s better to collect information in stages or front-load all requirements:

  “You might as well get all the pain up front … a lot of the time is lost in the back and forth after the submission of the application. Reducing that back and forth actually allows you to save a lot of time.” (37:44, Rudolf Jaeger) "Business customers live in fear … when they need a bank account, they apply to 10 different FinTechs … If we could use technology to get as much information at start as possible that would allow to complete this process, then the customer suddenly wins." (39:44, Ivan Zhesnevsky)

• Real-time, AI-enhanced guidance and feedback during onboarding can reduce rework.

8. Emerging Solutions & Big Ideas for the Future

[42:16], [44:02], [45:26]

• AI and automation set to play greater roles by reducing manual data gathering and repetitive communication.
• Rudolf calls for unified, global due-diligence standards and more collaborative internal teams.
• Ivan dreams of eliminating onboarding altogether:

  “I would like to get rid of customer onboarding … independently verified service providers [could] create a case for your business … you just share this file, this pile of documents with them and they process it in the way they want.” (45:26, Ivan Zhesnevsky)

  • This hints at a future with reusable, global digital business identities—mirroring what's emerging for consumers.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the fear and anxiety of business customers:

  “Business customers live in fear. … when they need a bank account, they apply to 10 different FinTechs at the same time because they’re not sure whether they’re gonna have the luck of getting this account.” (39:44, Ivan Zhesnevsky)

• On data foundations:

  “Data is not sexy, unfortunately. Nobody likes to talk about data, but I think it’s one of the really big issues.” (22:18, Emma Lindley)

• On compliance mindsets:

  "Compliance people are scared by the regulation and the regulators. … one of the challenges … is the availability of authoritative data sources.” (15:18, Emma Lindley)

• On the need for specialization:

  “Compliance analysts cannot be expert in all industries … I believe that there should be industry specialization within finteh … It’s better to be best in class in one thing.” (19:03, Ivan Zhesnevsky)

Key Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:14 | Introduction & framing of the business onboarding problem | | 06:33 | Explanation: Why is business onboarding harder than consumer KYC? | | 09:44 | “Discovery journeys” and why automation has natural limits | | 11:24 | How compliance mindsets & outdated risk models hinder progress | | 15:18 | Challenges of data sources & registry fragmentation | | 21:31 | The opportunity (and need) for unified, global KYB data standards | | 25:20 | The case for inter-institutional trust and data sharing | | 30:17 | User experience: analyst tools, transparency, and customer feedback | | 33:51 | The role of domicile and regulatory competition in onboarding | | 37:44 | Front-loading vs. staggered onboarding; the power of real-time AI | | 42:18 | Emma’s vision for better data and more AI-driven platforms | | 45:26 | Ivan’s provocative future: no onboarding, just share verified business identity |

Summary

The onboarding of borderless, cross-jurisdictional businesses remains a stubborn challenge even as fintech has transformed consumer KYC. The episode makes it clear that:

• The primary pain points are multi-layered identification, fragmented and unreliable data sources, regulatory complexity, and a pervasive lack of trust and interoperability between financial institutions.
• Progress requires not just technological innovation, but new mindsets focused on transparency, specialization, and user experience—both for clients and for analyst teams.
• Systemic solutions (like global digital business identities, AI-driven process automation, and trusted, reusable compliance data) are on the horizon, but require industry-wide cooperation and regulatory adaptation.

Bottom Line:
Better business onboarding will come from unifying and opening up global data, automating routine communication and feedback loops, developing fit-for-purpose KYB solutions, and—crucially—building norms of trust and data sharing between providers.

For more on the hosts and guests, check out 3S Money, OpenPaid, and Women in Identity.