How Banks Evaluate Industry-Leading KYC: Insights from Liminal's 2026 Index

Choosing KYC software for banks is no longer simply a question of whether a platform can verify an identity document. Banks, digital banks, neobanks, and other financial institutions increasingly need to evaluate how identity verification, fraud defenses, AML controls, ongoing monitoring, integrations, and operational scalability work together.

That makes defining an industry-leading KYC solution more complicated, especially as synthetic identities and deepfakes increase pressure on onboarding controls.

Liminal's 2026 KYC Index provides one framework for evaluating the market. Identomat was recognized as a Leading Vendor, but the recognition itself is only part of the story.

For banking teams building a vendor shortlist or RFP, the more useful question is: What should banks actually evaluate before selecting a KYC provider?

This guide breaks the decision into practical criteria that compliance, risk, fraud, operations, and technology teams can test.

What Industry-Leading KYC Means for Banks in 2026  

An industry-leading KYC platform needs to perform well beyond the initial identity check.

A bank must consider whether a prospective vendor can support accurate customer identification, reliable data, regulatory requirements, changing fraud patterns, high transaction volumes, customer experience, and the institution's broader financial crime compliance architecture.

Liminal's evaluation methodology provides a useful way to think about these requirements.

Product, strategy, and market presence  

Liminal evaluates KYC vendors across three broad dimensions:

Product considers how effectively a solution addresses important KYC capabilities and buyer requirements.

Strategy considers whether a vendor is positioned to address evolving market requirements, including automation, integration, ease of use, ongoing monitoring, fraud prevention, and broader coverage.

Market presence considers factors such as buyer awareness, perceived market leadership, company scale, and growth.

For a bank, these dimensions translate into a simple principle: a feature checklist alone is not enough.

A platform can offer document verification and biometrics but still create problems if it cannot integrate into existing infrastructure, support changing compliance workflows, handle higher volumes, or adapt to emerging fraud threats.

What banking buyers value most  

According to the 2026 Liminal research cited in this brief, 94% of banks consider data quality important or very important, while 94% place the same importance on compliance alignment. Scalability follows at 93%.

Those priorities make sense for financial institutions.

Poor data quality can create downstream compliance problems. Weak regulatory alignment can force teams to compensate with manual processes. Limited scalability can turn an effective pilot into an operational bottleneck when verification volumes increase.

Banks comparing KYC providers should therefore evaluate performance across the entire customer and compliance lifecycle rather than focusing on one verification feature.

Three Forces Changing How Banks Select KYC Vendors  

Several developments are making traditional KYC vendor selection criteria insufficient.

1. Synthetic identities and deepfakes are changing onboarding risk  

Identity fraud is becoming harder to assess using conventional document checks alone.

Synthetic identities can combine real and fabricated identity attributes. Deepfake technology can create increasingly convincing biometric attacks. As these methods improve, banks need controls capable of identifying inconsistencies across documents, biometrics, identity data, and other risk signals.

This also affects manual review.

Document mismatches and failed biometric or liveness checks are among the events that can trigger escalation. A bank evaluating remote identity proofing platforms for KYC and AML should therefore examine not only whether fraud controls exist, but also what happens when automated verification is uncertain.

Questions worth testing include:

• Which signals trigger additional verification?
• Can risk thresholds be configured?
• What information does an analyst receive during escalation?
• Can different customer risk levels follow different workflows?
• Are decisions and workflow changes captured for audit purposes?

The goal is not to eliminate every manual review. It is to make sure human intervention occurs where it adds value.

2. Perpetual KYC is becoming a baseline requirement  

Traditional KYC has often centered on account opening followed by periodic customer reviews.

That model is changing.

According to Liminal’s 2026 research, 98.8% of banks have deployed, are currently deploying, or plan to deploy perpetual KYC within the next 12 months.

Perpetual KYC, or pKYC, moves institutions toward continuous or event-driven reassessment rather than relying exclusively on fixed review cycles.

This matters during vendor selection because a platform that performs well at onboarding may not necessarily support the bank's ongoing customer due diligence requirements.

Buyers should examine whether a KYC platform can support changes in sanctions exposure, PEP status, adverse media, identity information, or other relevant risk signals throughout the customer relationship.

For a deeper look at this model, see Identomat's guide to perpetual KYC and ongoing compliance.

3. Banks increasingly want platform consolidation  

The third shift concerns architecture.

The 2026 Liminal research indicates that 87% of banks prefer a one-stop or broader financial crime compliance platform for KYC, compared with 12% that prefer point solutions.

That does not mean every institution should purchase every capability from one vendor.

It does mean banks should assess the operational cost of fragmentation.

Multiple point solutions can create integration work, inconsistent data, duplicated workflows, additional vendor management, and disconnected analyst experiences. At the same time, a consolidated platform only creates value when its individual capabilities meet the bank's required performance and control standards.

The correct RFP question is therefore not simply, "Does this vendor offer everything?"

It is: Can this platform reduce unnecessary complexity without compromising the controls we need?

How Banks Should Evaluate KYC Vendors  

Banks comparing KYC providers can use the following seven-step framework.

1. Verify identity and document capabilities. Test document authenticity checks, OCR, NFC where applicable, identity data extraction, supported documents, and geographic coverage.
2. Evaluate biometric and liveness defenses. Assess active and passive liveness, presentation attack resistance, face matching, and escalation behavior.
3. Assess AML and customer risk controls. Determine how sanctions, PEP, adverse media, and other screening capabilities fit the workflow.
4. Test workflow configurability. Compliance teams should be able to adapt verification paths to customer, product, geography, and risk without creating excessive engineering dependencies.
5. Examine integrations and data flows. Evaluate APIs, SDKs, existing systems, auditability, data quality, and how verification results reach downstream compliance tools.
6. Measure scalability and operational performance. A successful proof of concept should demonstrate how the system behaves at expected production volumes, not just under ideal test conditions.
7. Evaluate ongoing KYC capability. Determine how the vendor supports continuous monitoring, re-screening, re-verification, and risk-triggered customer reviews.

Bank KYC vendor evaluation checklist  

These criteria also explain why asking which KYC vendors big banks use is rarely enough to make a decision.

A platform suitable for one institution may not match another bank's products, jurisdictions, customer risk, architecture, or transaction volumes.

Digital banks and neobanks may place particularly high importance on automated remote onboarding, low customer friction, API integration, fraud detection, and scalability. Traditional institutions may have additional constraints involving legacy systems, existing case management, complex approval structures, and migration requirements.

Banks seeking a broader market comparison can review Identomat's guide to the best KYC software providers rather than treating a single industry ranking as the entire vendor-selection process.

What Good Looks Like in a Banking KYC POC or RFP  

A KYC proof of concept should reproduce realistic banking conditions.

Start with representative customer populations rather than a small collection of clean identity documents. Include common documents, difficult capture conditions, higher-risk scenarios, biometric checks, expected exceptions, and cases that should enter manual review.

Then establish measurable success criteria.

Banks should evaluate verification outcomes, data extraction quality, false rejection behavior, fraud detection, analyst workload, completion rates, processing performance, and integration requirements.

The POC should also test failure paths.

What happens after a document mismatch? How does the platform respond when a liveness check fails? Can the institution introduce an additional verification step for a higher-risk applicant? Can analysts understand why a case was escalated?

For institutions evaluating a video KYC solution for banks, the same principle applies. Video should be evaluated as part of a risk-based verification architecture rather than as an isolated feature, unless a standalone video verification process is specifically required. Banks should determine where video verification is necessary, when automated verification is sufficient, and how the resulting evidence should be retained.

Security and governance belong in the evaluation too.

Compliance teams should work alongside information security, fraud, operations, procurement, and technology teams to evaluate controls before a platform reaches production.

For biometric-specific vendor criteria, see Identomat's guide to liveness detection software.

A note for US and UK banks  

The underlying principle is similar in both markets: technology needs to support the institution's compliance program rather than define it.

US institutions should consider how a vendor fits their broader BSA/AML, customer identification, due diligence, recordkeeping, risk management, and examination environment.

UK institutions likewise need to evaluate KYC technology within their applicable AML, financial-crime, data protection, and risk-management obligations.

Specific requirements depend on the institution and its activities.

Where Identomat Fits  

Liminal recognized Identomat as a Leading Vendor for KYC in its 2026 report.

That recognition is useful evidence for a bank shortlist.

Identomat's platform includes capabilities relevant to the evaluation criteria discussed above, including:

• document verification with OCR and NFC capabilities;
• active, passive, and video-based liveness options;
• AML screening, including PEP, sanctions, and adverse-media checks;
• Video KYC;
• configurable identity verification and compliance workflows;
• API and SDK integration options;
• support for ongoing and perpetual KYC workflows.

For vendor security and biometric due diligence, Identomat also holds certifications and has undergone assessments, including ISO/IEC 30107-3, SOC 2 Type II, and iBeta Level 2, among others. Identomat was also recognized in the FinCrimeTech50 2026 as one of the top 50 companies helping to combat financial crime.

These capabilities are particularly relevant to banks looking to combine remote identity proofing, AML screening, configurable workflows, and ongoing compliance processes.

Banks assessing a new onboarding architecture can explore Identomat's KYC onboarding solution or request a meeting to discuss their verification and compliance requirements.

Building a KYC Shortlist Around Bank Requirements  

The definition of industry-leading KYC is expanding.

Banks now need to consider identity verification and AML compliance alongside deepfake and synthetic identity risk, ongoing monitoring, integration complexity, scalability, and the operational cost of fragmented technology.

Independent recognition such as Liminal's Leading Vendor designation can narrow the field. It cannot replace an institution-specific evaluation.

The strongest selection process starts with the bank's risk and compliance requirements, converts those requirements into measurable RFP criteria, and then tests shortlisted providers under realistic conditions.

For banking teams evaluating identity verification, AML screening, liveness, Video KYC, and configurable onboarding workflows, request a meeting with Identomat to assess how the platform fits your KYC architecture.