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Cost Analysis
Infrastructure and model cost breakdown with ROI analysis for both KYC systems.
Cost Analysis: KYC Copilot + KYC Compliance Agent
Assumptions
| Variable | Value |
|---|---|
| Monthly document submissions | 10,000 |
| Monthly compliance reviews | 10,000 |
| Avg document size | 2 MB (image) or 200KB (PDF) |
| AWS region | ca-central-1 (Canada) |
| GPT-4o pricing | $0.005/1K input tokens, $0.015/1K output tokens |
| Claude 3.5 Sonnet pricing | $0.003/1K input tokens, $0.015/1K output tokens |
| AWS Textract | $0.015 per page (Analyse Document API) |
| Compliance officer salary | $75,000/year = $6,250/month |
| Hours saved per review | 10 min → 2 min = 8 min/review |
Idea 1: KYC Copilot (Pre-Submission Validator)
AI API Costs (10,000 validations/month)
| Service | Usage | Unit Cost | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-4o Vision (quality check) | 10,000 calls × ~800 tokens | $0.005/1K input | $40 |
| GPT-4o (structuring OCR output) | 10,000 calls × ~1,200 tokens | $0.005/1K input | $60 |
| GPT-4o (output generation) | 10,000 calls × ~400 tokens output | $0.015/1K output | $60 |
| AWS Textract (OCR) | 10,000 docs × 1 page avg | $0.015/page | $150 |
| Subtotal AI/ML | $310 |
Infrastructure (AWS, ca-central-1)
| Resource | Spec | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|---|
| EKS Cluster | 3× t3.xlarge nodes | $290 |
| RDS PostgreSQL | db.t3.medium, Multi-AZ | $180 |
| ElastiCache Redis | cache.t3.medium | $80 |
| S3 | ~500 GB (temp docs, 24h TTL) | $12 |
| NAT Gateway | 2× (HA setup) | $65 |
| Load Balancer | Application LB | $25 |
| Data Transfer | ~100 GB outbound | $9 |
| Subtotal Infra | $661 |
Other
| Item | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| Datadog (monitoring) | $100 |
| Sentry (error tracking) | $26 |
| GitHub Actions (CI/CD) | $0 (public) |
| Subtotal Other | $126 |
Total: ~$1,097/month for 10,000 validations
Per-validation cost: ~$0.11
Scaling
| Volume | Monthly Cost | Cost/Validation |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000/month | ~$780 | ~$0.78 |
| 10,000/month | ~$1,097 | ~$0.11 |
| 100,000/month | ~$4,200 | ~$0.042 |
| 1,000,000/month | ~$28,000 | ~$0.028 |
ROI Calculation
If 60% of 10,000 applicants previously needed to resubmit (6,000 resubmissions):
- Compliance review cost per resubmission: ~$6 (12 min × $30/hr)
- Total cost of resubmissions avoided: 6,000 × $6 = $36,000/month
- System cost: $1,097/month
- Net monthly ROI: $34,903
- ROI ratio: 32x
Idea 3: KYC Compliance Agent (Internal Review Copilot)
AI API Costs (10,000 reviews/month)
| Service | Usage | Unit Cost | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude 3.5 Sonnet (document analysis) | 10,000 × ~2,000 input tokens | $0.003/1K | $60 |
| Claude 3.5 Sonnet (policy checking) | 10,000 × ~1,500 input tokens | $0.003/1K | $45 |
| Claude 3.5 Sonnet (rejection drafting) | 5,000 × ~1,000 output tokens | $0.015/1K | $75 |
| AWS Textract (OCR) | 10,000 docs × 1 page avg | $0.015/page | $150 |
| Subtotal AI/ML | $330 |
Infrastructure
| Resource | Spec | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|---|
| EKS Cluster | 2× t3.large nodes | $145 |
| RDS PostgreSQL | db.t3.medium, Multi-AZ | $180 |
| ElastiCache Redis | cache.t3.small | $40 |
| SQS (document queue) | ~10K messages | $0.50 |
| SES (email sending) | ~5,000 emails | $0.50 |
| S3 (audit log storage) | ~50 GB | $1.15 |
| NAT Gateway | 1× | $33 |
| ALB | 1× | $25 |
| Subtotal Infra | $425 |
Other
| Item | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| Datadog | $100 |
| Okta SSO (auth) | $150 (est. 10 users) |
| Sentry | $26 |
| Subtotal Other | $276 |
Total: ~$1,031/month for 10,000 AI-assisted reviews
Per-review cost: ~$0.10
ROI Calculation
Without AI:
- 1 compliance officer processes 1,600 cases/month (80/day)
- Cost: $6,250/month per officer
- For 10,000 cases: 6.25 officers needed = $39,062/month
With AI (human-in-the-loop):
- AI handles initial analysis + drafting (10 min → 2 min per case)
- 1 officer now handles 4,000 cases/month
- For 10,000 cases: 2.5 officers needed = $15,625/month
- Plus AI system cost: $1,031/month
- Total: $16,656/month
Savings: $22,406/month ($268,872/year) ROI ratio: 2.3x (accounting for human reviewers retained)
Additionally:
- Auto-approve rate (~30% of clean submissions): reduces human review to 7,000 cases
- This brings officer need down to 1.75 officers = $10,937 + $1,031 = $11,968/month
- Enhanced savings: $27,094/month ($325,128/year)
Combined System (Both Deployed)
| System | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| KYC Copilot | $1,097 |
| KYC Compliance Agent | $1,031 |
| Shared infra savings | -$300 |
| Total | $1,828/month |
Combined monthly savings: $57,000+ Combined annual ROI: >$650,000
Cost Optimization Opportunities
- Switch from GPT-4o to GPT-4o-mini for structuring tasks (5x cheaper): saves ~$70/month
- Batch Textract calls using async API (50% discount): saves ~$75/month
- Self-host small vision models (e.g., Idefics on GPU) for blur/quality checks: eliminates ~$100/month
- Spot instances for worker nodes: saves ~30% on EKS compute
- Reserved instances (1-year) for RDS and ElastiCache: saves ~40%
Optimized combined monthly cost: ~$1,200/month (vs $1,828 standard)