The story
Know the customer before the account exists.
A person asks for an account. Before anything is opened, the bank has to know who it is dealing with. The customer provides identity documents; the client advisor verifies the identity with an ID check tool and passes the case to compliance. Compliance screens the name against sanctions and watch lists with a screening tool. That screening is the control step of the model, drawn in blue: a step that must happen, by that role, before the process may continue.
The first gateway asks whether the screening produced a hit. Usually it did not, and the case goes straight to the back office, which opens the account in the core banking system. If there is a hit, compliance clarifies it: is it a false positive, a namesake, or a real match? The second gateway asks whether the case is cleared. Cleared cases join the standard path; the others are rejected by the advisor, who tells the customer.
Four lanes: the customer, who starts the process and provides the documents; the client advisor, who verifies and, where needed, rejects; compliance, who screens and clarifies; and the back office, which opens the account. The two gateways both sit with compliance, because both questions are compliance questions.
This is a fictional example model. Real onboarding would add risk classification, beneficial-owner checks, politically exposed persons, product selection and the signature of the account contract. The example keeps the shape: a mandatory control, a short standard path, and an exception loop that is closed before the account exists.
The diagram
The model as BPMN 2.0.
The compliance lane holds the control step and both gateways. The no branch of Hit found? runs down into the back office lane and across to Open account: the standard case passes compliance in one step and never touches the clarification.
Elements used
What is in the model, and why.
Eleven nodes. The model is small, but it already separates three things a regulator and an auditor would ask about: who identifies, who screens, and who opens.
Lanes: Customer, Client advisor, Compliance, Back office
The separation of advisor and compliance is the point of the model. The person who wants the customer is not the person who screens the customer. The lanes make that separation of duties visible without a word of explanation.
Gateways: Hit found? and Cleared?
Two exclusive gateways. The first is answered by the screening tool, the second by a person after clarification. Drawing them apart keeps the automatic decision and the human decision distinguishable.
Control step: Sanctions screening
The blue task. It is the step that must not be skipped, by anyone, for any customer. In the .bpmn file it carries the documentation "Control step" and the system name, so the information survives the export.
Systems: ID check, screening tool, core banking
Three systems, three roles. Each lane uses its own tool, and the case moves between them. Where the move is a re-typed form or an email, the model shows exactly which border it crosses.
End events: Account opened, Rejection sent
The account is opened in the back office lane, so the end event sits there. The rejection is sent by the advisor, so that end sits with the advisor. Each end is in the lane of the role that produces it.
Where the process waits
What to look at in a KYC model.
The model has one mandatory control and one exception loop. Both are places where cases wait, and both are places where a workshop should slow down.
Documents that are not quite right
Provide ID documents is in the customer's lane. An expired document or an unreadable copy sends the case back before it has properly started, and that loop is usually not drawn anywhere.
False positives
Most hits are namesakes. Clarify hit is a short task in the diagram and a long one in practice, because it means asking the customer for more and waiting for the answer.
The advisor cannot see the case
Once the case is with compliance, the advisor often has no view of it. The customer asks the advisor, the advisor asks compliance. The lane border between the two is where that friction lives.
Opening is the last step, not the first
In the model the account is opened only after the screening. A process in which the account exists before the control is complete looks the same on the outside and very different to an auditor.
Request the file
The model as a .bpmn file.
The file is a fictional example model in BPMN 2.0 XML. It opens in standard BPMN tools such as Camunda Modeler, Signavio or ADONIS, with lanes, both gateways, the control step and the diagram layout. It is sent by email on request; nothing is downloaded from this page.
The next banking process: credit approval. Why control steps matter when AI agents take over work: processes before AI agents. Processes in banking as a whole: banking.