NSD implemented a project to automate the extraction of data from the W8-BEN form at the ITFB base EasyDoc

2021: Automate the process of extracting data from the W8-BEN form

The National Settlement Depository (NSD, part of the Moscow Exchange Group) together with ITFB Group implemented a project to automate the process of extracting data from the W8-BEN form. NSD announced this on November 30, 2021.

The W8-BEN form is filled in by non-resident individuals USA who plan to receive income in the form of dividends and coupons on the American issuers' securities using a preferential tax rate. The client transfers the completed form to the broker, and he, in turn, to the higher depositary, which is a tax agent, holds tax and transfers it to the US tax service.

The growing interest in foreign shares has led to a significant increase in the volume of W8-BEN forms coming for processing and to increased requirements for the quality of the extracted data. Prior to the implementation of the project, the data from the form was analyzed manually by NSD employees, which required significant work. It was necessary to find an effective, fast and high-quality solution that allows you to automatically extract the necessary data from the questionnaire.

As a recognition system, a system on the ITFB EasyDoc platform was chosen, implementing the concept of enterprise content management: scanning and recognition management, managing the analysis of data extracted from documents, storage and search management.

The ITFB Group has developed an application on the EasyDoc platform that recognizes the attributes of the W8-BEN form. To do this, the recognition model was trained on the provided array of existing questionnaires, the rules for automatic verification of data were set up and integration with the target system on the NSD side was implemented. The software completely automates the processing of the W8-BEN form from the moment it is received from the client to the transfer of extracted and verified data to the target system.

This solution made it possible to implement the automation project in a short time and reduce the load on the operational department, leaving only copies of very poor quality for manual analysis. The pilot operation of the system demonstrated the high quality of data recognition, and the data quality is guaranteed by a multi-stage automatic verification system. In addition, the solution meets safety and continuity standards. Investors can be calm for keeping their data safe, noted Pavel Andrianov, member of the Management Board, Director of Information Technology of NSD.

The main difficulty we encountered in the process of creating the W8-BEN form recognition pattern was the high variability of the form of presentation of the document with apparent external similarity. To overcome it, in addition to the classical technology of creating recognition patterns, elements of artificial intelligence were used: training neural networks on data provided by the customer, commented on Golyanskaya Ekaterina, project manager from ITFB Group.