Meet Jesus E. Sanchez, Chief Product Officer at Muinmos
What do you most enjoy about working at Muinmos?
There are two things I enjoy the most. I enjoy working with clients to help them make their onboarding compliant and efficient. They come to Muinmos because they trust we can help in each area, and getting to work with them is challenging and fun. It becomes a relationship because it’s not just about getting them to use Muinmos and then moving on to the next project. We are always there to support them after, whether it’s discussing what they want to see in future enhancements, how we can improve our services, or checking in to see how things are going. I use the word clients, but it is just as much a partnership because their success and growth continuously drive use to keep improving as well, and improvements we make help them to continue to grow. The chances I get to meet with clients after they are live with Muinmos always feel like meeting up with friends and less like some form of business formality.
The other thing I enjoy is literally coming to work every day. I did the Peace Corps many years ago and their slogan is ‘The Toughest Job You Will Ever Love.’ While that is true, I can also say the same about Muinmos. Before joining Muinmos I spent about 11 years working from home, never going to an office and seeing co-workers. I thought the transition would be hard but from day one I enjoy being around everyone and the energy we all have to do the best we can on a daily basis. Everyone has the same goal, and we work together to achieve it.
What trends are you currently seeing in terms of client onboarding requirements?
You are starting to hear about it more and more, but pKYC will become more relevant. I previously worked for the US Government and there most Federal employees and Contractors with specific positions and security clearances were re-investigated every 5 or 10 years, depending on their clearance. They had reporting responsibilities, but many times you did not know if something occurred to impact their eligibility for employment until the event had passed. Over the past few years there was a transition to ‘Continuous Evaluation’ wherein checks from sources (criminal records, financial records, etc…) were collected/monitored on an ongoing basis and agencies now receive alerts so they can better understand the risk someone poses.
Many Financial Institutions request yearly assessment reviews (or reviews every ‘x’ number of years based on risk) and don’t know if a current client is possibly not eligible for services. The shift to monitoring for PEP, Sanctions and Adverse Media; Corporate data changes; Transaction Monitoring; etc. on a continuous basis to understand this eligibility, as opposed to running new assessments every ‘X’ period of time, will become much more prevalent. It’s always a risk based determination and Regulators will likely have their own criteria for what is required in terms of ensuring this eligibility.
A trend I can also see occurring at some point is the right of appeal for clients who are denied services. Again, taking a page from my experience working with investigations for Employees and Contractors, they had appeal rights and could challenge a decision, obtain access to the information that was used to render the decision (with some limits), and request a review of the decision by a 3rd party. In this case, the FIs reasoning for rejecting a client will have to be objective and not subjective. The reason I add this part is because I see often the demand for data such as ‘Reputational Risk’ or ‘Open Source’ and the decision starts to become subjective or tainted by information that is not relevant. When a client is able to challenge a decision, the reasoning for the denial becomes very important and subjectivity will result in a decision being overturned. If the rejected client ends up receiving some form of compensation or other benefit, that will become an issue for FIs.
Tell us one thing about yourself that people may not know
As mentioned before, I spent two years living in Cape Verde, West Africa, on the Island of Santo Antao, working as a teacher and community development volunteer. I learned Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole and spent my days teaching English and Computers and organizing events and activities to raise awareness of HIV/Aids, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, etc. It was challenging: I was away from family and friends, and quickly learned that washing all your clothes by hand is not as cool as it looks in the movies; wringing out jeans is the worst. But the experience taught me a lot about helping others and what one really needs to be happy. It doesn’t take a lot if you just try and have fun with whatever it is you are doing.
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