MicroCred, an investment company specialized in microfinance created by PlaNet Finance, provides financial services to low-income entrepreneurs who are excluded from the traditional financial system. As for every player in the traditional finance market, MicroCred is regularly exposed to risk individuals which could lead to financial losses. As a result, in order to better know its customers and business partners and fully comply with Know Your Customer policies MicroCred has selected Sword FircoSoft to implement its best-of-breed Firco Trust filtering solution in two African sites: Nigeria and Ivory Coast.

MicroCred selected Firco Trust to filter both their existing and potential accounts. The solution combines these two functions in one product. It is simple, light, cost-effective, automated and require little interaction with the user. In batch, MicroCred can filter information about its existing customers against sanction lists provided by FircoSoft, to ensure that no high-risk party stays in its files. With Firco Trust, MicroCred can also make on-demand queries (look-up on single names) to instantly evaluate the risk on a potential customer during the on-boarding process. MicroCred also requested Firco List Service to benefit from value-added list management services and automatically obtain the most updated and optimized OFAC, UN and EU lists. The quality of the data being key in the filtering process, Firco List Service helps maximizing the filtering effectiveness and minimizing the false positive hit rate.

"We are very proud that MicroCred found in FircoSoft the right companion to help them meet the latest standards in compliance and KYC programmes, while satisfying the specific requirements of a fast-growing entity in the microfinance system. In the future, we hope to have the opportunity to accompany MicroCred's international development and expand our services in other sites around Africa and Asia, where we see greater and greater interest in our solution for the filtering and the identification of people." says Christophe Destephen, Regional Alliance Manager.

"Sword FircoSoft was deeply devoted to adapt its products to the microfinance market, with easy-to-use solutions requiring low technical resources and a minimum impact on our current organization. Sword FircoSoft has been fast and very effective as they successfully implemented Firco Trust solution within 5 days. From now on, we are able to check our customers' files in batch or on-demand and identify potential risks to remain compliant. " says Arnaud Ventura, CEO of MicroCred.