How Qonto's Building 100%-Compliant KYC-KYB Onboarding with Workflows

In the regulated world of fintech, compliance isn't optional—it's existential. One missed validation step can put an entire company at risk. Martin Bouvier, Head of Customer Onboarding at Qonto, knows this reality intimately. Leading a team of 50 people internally and 300+ externally across 8 European markets, he's responsible for processing 5,000 new business accounts every week while maintaining 100% regulatory compliance.

The challenge of keeping KYC/KYB humming and compliant?

At that volume, human errors aren't just possible, they're inevitable. Until Martin's team co-built a solution with Forest Admin that changed everything.

During the course of our discussion, Martin mentioned great anecdotes and insights. Here are the main takeaways.

The False Choice Between Speed and Compliance

Most scaling companies face what seems like an unavoidable trade-off: move fast to handle volume or slow down to ensure compliance. Martin and his team at Qonto rejected this premise entirely.

"With the volume we get, sometimes 4,000, 5,000 new accounts to check every week, it's not possible to not do human mistakes. For one account, it's more than 20 steps we need to check."

- Martin Bouvier, Qonto

The stakes couldn't be higher. Qonto operates across eight European countries, each with different regulations and legal forms. A compliance failure in one market could trigger regulatory scrutiny across the entire business.

Yet despite this complexity, Qonto has achieved something remarkable: moving to 100% compliance in their Belgian market during their pilot of Forest Workflows. They are now rolling out the approach across Germany, Italy, and all other markets and standardizing their processes. Along the way, they manage to impact their key KPI positively: speed of treatment, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and of course compliance.

It's the result of a deliberate partnership between Qonto's operational expertise and Forest Admin's Workflows capability.

Binary Procedures: The Framework for Foolproof Compliance

When Martin's team started working with Forest Workflows, they made a critical decision: eliminate all subjectivity from their procedures.

"Forest Workflows, the way, in my mind, it needs to work is to have a binary procedure. To make sure we are compliant 100% of the time, the agent needs to follow binary choices at every sub step. It should be a yes, should be a no. Should be a no. Why? And then sub steps, yes or no."

- Martin Bouvier, Qonto

The insight is profound: if you leave room for subjective judgment in compliance processes, you create room for improvisation and mistakes. And mistakes create risk.

Qonto's team reviewed all their existing procedures and rewrote them as binary decision trees. Every step became a yes/no question. Every workflow became a series of gates that couldn't be bypassed.

This wasn't just documentation: it was codification and standardization. They translated their written procedures from Zendesk into BPMN format, then embedded them directly into Forest Admin as executable workflows.

The result? Agents can't skip steps. They can't make subjective calls. They follow the procedure exactly as designed, every single time.

Workflows Where the Work Happens

One of the most powerful aspects of Forest Workflows is where they run: directly inside the production tool where agents already work.

Before Workflows, Qonto's agents faced a familiar frustration: switching between Forest Admin and Zendesk guide to check procedures. Multiple tabs open. Multiple cases handled simultaneously. Procedures buried in documentation.

"Sometimes one agent handles different cases at the same time, so there was chances of human mistakes and doing the wrong stuff on the right accounts," Martin notes.

Forest Workflows eliminated this context switching entirely. Now, procedures appear as interactive checklists directly in Forest Admin, displayed as pop-ups while agents review KYC/KYB information.

"Having directly our procedure implemented into our production tool, on a small pop-up displayed, while we review the new KYC/KYB, helps a lot our agents, making sure they follow every step until full KYB completion or refusal."

- Martin Bouvier, Qonto.

The impact is twofold:

1. Compliance: Agents can't skip steps or lose their place

2. Speed: No tab switching means faster treatment time and better focus

This is the Forest Workflows difference: not a separate orchestration tool, but workflows that execute where your operations already happen.

From Crisis to 100% Compliance: The Belgium Pilot

The Belgium story is particularly instructive. When Qonto launched in the Belgian market in October 2024, they staffed the team with agents from their French market for language reasons. But French and Belgian regulations differ significantly.

The result? Most accounts validated in Belgium weren't compliant. A compliance crisis that put the entire company at risk.

"We decided to react fast and use that opportunity that Forest Workflows provided to do a pilot on Belgium," Martin recalls.

They didn't just implement a tool—they co-built the solution. Qonto's team brought deep operational expertise about what needed to be checked and why. Forest Admin brought the technical capability to codify those procedures as executable workflows.

The outcome speaks for itself: "Now it's fully live and we are 100% compliant in Belgium, thanks to Workflows in particular."

This success led to a strategic decision: hire a dedicated Ops Tooling Manager (Audrey) to focus full-time on creating and deploying Forest Workflows across all markets. The investment reflects how central Workflows have become to Qonto's operational strategy.

The Strategic Application of Workflows and AI

While many companies rush to implement AI everywhere, Qonto has taken a measured, strategic approach. Martin sees Forest Workflows as the foundation for AI-powered automation—but only where it makes sense.

"The next step for us is to use AI, of course, to automatized simple checks, speeding up treatment time, and making sure, thanks to the AI, it's always done qualitatively," Martin explains.

The vision is clear: use AI to fetch external information (like data from Infogreffe or INPI in France), suggest next actions based on previous workflow steps, and automate routine validations. But always within the structured framework of binary workflows.

This approach ensures AI enhances compliance rather than introducing new risks. The workflows provide guardrails; AI provides speed.

The Ultimate Lesson: Co-Building Creates Transformation

Throughout our conversation, one theme remained constant: the power of true partnership between customer expertise and product capability.

Qonto didn't just adopt Forest Workflows—they helped shape it. Their operational challenges informed the product roadmap. Their binary procedure framework influenced how workflows should be designed. Their Belgium pilot proved the concept at scale.

For operations leaders facing similar challenges—regulated processes, high volume, compliance requirements—Martin's advice is clear: invest in the right tooling, standardize your procedures as binary decision trees, and don't accept the false choice between speed and compliance.

As AI continues to reshape operations, the companies that succeed will be those that build the right foundations first. Forest Workflows provides that foundation: a way to codify operational expertise, execute it where work happens, and maintain control through roles, permissions, and audit logs.

Want to dive deeper into Martin's insights? Listen to the full episode of Mission Ops Possible to hear more about Qonto's rollout strategy, their approach to standardization across markets, and practical tips for operations professionals building compliance-grade workflows.

You can watch the episode on Youtube, and also find Mission Ops Possible on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast platforms.

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