How Enigma KYB Increased Secretary of State Registration Fill Rates by 50%

The Verification Bottleneck

Secretary of State registration verification is a foundational step in Know Your Business (KYB) compliance. Every financial institution needs to confirm that a business is legitimately registered before opening accounts, processing payments, or extending credit.

But traditional verification methods hit a wall. Business names don’t always match exactly across databases. Addresses change. Registration records use inconsistent formatting. The result: low fill rates, frequent manual review, and slow onboarding that frustrates both compliance teams and the businesses trying to get approved.

In advance of launching Enigma KYB, Enigma worked with a variety of financial institutions across payments, online banking, and KYB orchestration to test efficacy compared to traditional providers. The question was straightforward: could advanced matching technology close the gap between what businesses submit and what Secretary of State databases contain?

The Approach: Advanced Matching Meets Registration Enrichment

Enigma KYB takes a fundamentally different approach to Secretary of State verification. Rather than relying on exact string matching against registration databases, the system combines two capabilities:

Advanced Matching

Enigma’s matching engine handles the real-world messiness of business identity. “ABC Plumbing LLC” and “ABC Plumbing, L.L.C.” are the same business. “Smith & Associates” and “Smith and Associates Inc” are the same entity. Fuzzy matching, entity normalization, and intelligent name parsing resolve variations that would fail traditional lookups.

Registration Enrichment

When initial matching returns a partial result, Enigma enriches the verification with additional registration context — alternative names, historical filings, related registrations — to build a complete picture of the business’s registration status without requiring manual intervention.

The combination means that businesses which would previously require analyst review can be verified instantly.

The Results: 50% Increase in Fill Rates

The testing results across multiple financial institutions were consistent and significant.

Enigma increased registration fill rates by approximately 50% compared to traditional providers. With Enigma, these financial institutions increased their instant verification to 72.4% on average, across segments — meaning nearly three out of four business verifications completed automatically with no manual steps.

Why Fill Rates Matter

Every percentage point of fill rate improvement has a cascading effect. Higher fill rates mean fewer manual reviews. Fewer manual reviews mean faster onboarding. Faster onboarding means lower customer acquisition costs and better business experience.

At scale — thousands or millions of verifications per year — a 50% improvement in fill rates translates to substantial operational savings and a fundamentally different compliance workflow.

Key Takeaways

1. Matching technology is the bottleneck. The data exists in Secretary of State databases. The challenge is connecting messy real-world business identities to clean database records. Advanced matching solves this.

2. Enrichment eliminates manual review. When initial matching falls short, enrichment with alternative names, historical filings, and related registrations closes the gap — without human intervention.

3. Results are consistent across sectors. The 72.4% instant verification rate held across payments, online banking, and KYB orchestration — indicating the approach works regardless of the specific FI context.

Technical Specifications