Life moves pretty fast
A famous quote once said 'Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around you could miss it'. This is certainly the case at least from our perspective just now. The online identity, verification and trust industry has received such a strong gust of wind that it is somewhat hard to even write this short update.
This is especially the case in terms of how Banks can play a key role in creating trust online. Whether spurred on from the Payment Services Directive (PSD2) or just a general recognition that the pains are now so great that we have to take positive action in dealing with the fraud, onboarding, compliance and all the related issues. Banks have themselves a huge need for greater levels of identity when operating online and, in my own view, a huge opportunity from the role they could play as well. While on a panel earlier this year it was great to see one of the UK's main Retail Banks admit that they saw Identity as a USP that they could themselves leverage in the market. As long as this is done to enable and empower the consumer than this is a huge step forward.
The PSD2 is already playing a critical role as a catalyst for the industry to understand and discuss the potential impact of Banks playing a role within this space. Conversations with FDATA alongside FCA, FFA, Payments Council and numerous others all highlight the opportunity in this space.
It has been 4 years since was created specifically to help create a layer of trust in the Internet that doesn’t exist today - one that was underpinned at least initially by leveraging the trust consumers already have with their bank to prove they really are who they say they are online.
The need for this trust continues to build with the media covering almost every day the impact from not having it. From fraud to compliance, underwriting to affordability, personal data to hacking - consumers are demanding more and more that something be done. This is what is so exciting for us. To be able to offer such a high level of trust alongside convenience, control and security helps us make a positive impact in a market that is so a part of everyday life. Over the next few months you will see more and more announcements from us on how we are hoping to make this impact but for now lets just reflect on how much of a fundamental need online trust is for each and every one of us.
And it’s a global issue. Australia is currently in a crossroads, South Korea a bit of a crisis, India under question, the US struggling and even the UK not getting the traction that that it had aspired for. It's time to move from government issued, segregated and managed identity services (especially where like in the case of Australia there are multiple all being developed) and empower the consumer to own and manage their own identities. Empowering consumers to own, manage and control their own identity is the only universal solution - what we should be doing as an industry is understanding how these can be used - what they mean and how we educate consumers.
This is a trend that we continue to see ourselves especially as what is being termed an Identity 3.0 / Bring Your Own Identity (BYOID) provider. It's this consumer approach that has had us involved with NSTIC and OIX and similar projects both in the US and UK. Now as we expand to more countries with people in Australia, Canada and other regions we are every day surprised at the sheer number of conversations around the pains in the market.
DirectID, our recently launched B2B plug and play cloud service that embeds directly in your process, has highlighted the opportunity for businesses to take advantage of the consumers trust, identity and data that they already have with their online Bank. In a short few months we have had dozens of customers ranging from small independents and new FinTech starupts to banks and billion dollar lenders integrate seamlessly for a frictionless user experience that enables the next generation of online consumer finance applications in retail banking, lending, mortgages and payments. With this powerful online verification and data solution for customer onboarding, assessment and underwriting, we take the trust and assurance in bank-verified identities and real-time financial profiles and match it with credit and bureau data, so you can make more accurate and instant decisions. Bank Verified Identities (through a consumers bank login) and Live Financial data (real time access to a consumers 90 day bank statements) layered with analytics and intelligence has had a fantastic reception to date especially in the areas of online lending and consumer engagement. All in a process that can take just ½ a day to get up and running and a couple minutes for the consumer to go through is already being described as a global disruptor.
It's this disruption, this impact and the chance to fundamentally change the way we interact online that is core to everything we do. If we can empower consumers, create a new level of trust online and make life easier then we have made the difference we want to make.
