Accountancy firm clients also appreciate the company’s use of CLEAR, as it helps protect them from risk and enables them to bring on new payroll clients with confidence. This precaution has helped Creative Solutions Software Corporation attract and retain more business from accountants.
CLEAR connects with other important software the company uses, such as Salesforce, via application programming interfaces (APIs), allowing data to flow smoothly between applications. In Creative Solutions Software Corporation’s case, this turnkey interoperability eliminated the need to invest in a new standalone customer relationship management (CRM) solution, since CRM can be handled seamlessly through Salesforce.
Hill and her team are excited about the possibility of automating more basic checks in CLEAR, freeing them up to focus on more higher-value tasks that require specialist expertise, such conducting further, more in-depth checks. She knows she can rely on excellent customer support from Thomson Reuters as the journey with CLEAR continues. In her view, “The CLEAR support team is one of the best I’ve worked with.”
She concludes, “There’s not a day that goes by when we don’t use CLEAR — it’s open on my team’s computers from the time they begin until the end of the day. CLEAR is always where we start.”
Smart Decisions
By using CLEAR, Creative Solutions Software Corporation has identified multiple instances of potential fraud and flagged numerous companies it ultimately chose not to engage with—strengthening its due diligence and risk management processes.
For example, if a client’s email is hacked and contract employees are added to their account, CLEAR enables the company to determine if those employees are real people, or if the information is false, such as if the names or Social Security numbers don’t match.
In the first year of deployment, CLEAR flagged that an accounting firm had hired an administrative assistant recently released from jail for tax fraud. This flag promoted the company to not onboard the firm.
This is rare — but vital. Having reliable information from CLEAR keeps the proportion of customers denied payroll services to a minimum, because often it identifies issues that can be fixed. On average, the company refuses less than 1% of potential business. However, that small percentage can save large losses. As Hill points out, it’s not just about volume, but the damage fraudsters or financially weak customers can do.
“If a fraudster does get through, losses could be anywhere from $10,000 to $250,000. And if they get you once, they don’t stop trying to get through again via any method they can. Having CLEAR has helped show we’re serious about combating fraud, so we don’t get targeted like we used to. They know we’ll block them from doing business with us. Even if fraudsters develop new tricks down the road, if we stick to our procedures and continue to run everybody through CLEAR, we should be able to stop them in their tracks,” says Hill.
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