Year of Identity?
I remember a few years ago, early in our journey, saying that this year would be the 'Year of Identity'. Well I think it's finally starting to happen - the pain is now so great that it’s a key topic on top of so many agenda's. A perfect storm perhaps between increasing fraud to companies facing $600m lawsuits, from consumers struggling with old world processes to regulatory changes opening up the market, from increased global competitiveness to the FinTech fad now even on the agenda at Westminster (thanks to the great work Innovate Finance has been doing here). It's all about Identity…Finally!
There is still a long way and a lot of hard work ahead of us before we are able to truly solve this problem. But every day seems to be a step forward in building the awareness and solutions in solving what is a fundamental challenge of what is now really part of everyday life. This was highlighted last week at FinTech Week where it featured on almost every talk, workshop or keynote. I shared my thoughts here: http://www.miicard.com/blog/201509/identity-30-industry-update-fintechweek-2015
It was incredible the amount of interest across the board - a trend that we are seeing everywhere from Finovate Fall this year through to the Australian Consumer Finance Forum. It has been a busy couple of months and it's only going to get busier before the end of the year. If you are at any of the following events let me know - lets organise a time to meet up and we grab a coffee.
The importance of banks in the challenge of creating trust online is also coming into focus. From our post on DirectID and banks through to the more recent Payment Services Directive (PSD2 and access to accounts) through to the UK's initiative Open Bank Working Group - opening up these sources of data and trust is having a fundamental change to how we operate online. We are seeing that directly in the activity that is building up around our B2B service DirectID. It now has more than one bank using it or kicking off projects as well as numerous lenders from the billion dollar giants to the disruptive P2P mortgage lenders. Affordability, verified income, Bank Verified Identity and even how we can improve the account switching process are all very hot topics.
And customers are loving it: “The DirectID widget is awesome, very user friendly and easy to implement as well! A basic setup can easily be done in under a day. “ Yannick Donckers, Xpenditure. I'm very proud of not only the product we have built but the fantastic team we have pulled together to help change the world we live in.
We have started working with Deloitte as well on leveraging the identity and data that we have with DirectID and miiCard and applying that, with their insights and domain knowledge, into these situations. We did our first webinar the other day (here if you want to listen) and next week have organised our first Breakfast Briefing in advance of the Edinburgh FinTech event on October 8th.
I'd like to invite you to join us for this Breakfast Briefing, to introduce our services and show to you how we are working to make the 7 Day Account Switching process faster and easier for banks and their customers.
Date: Thursday 8 October, 2015
Time: 8:00 - 9:00 am
Venue: The Scotsman Hotel, 20 North Bridge Edinburgh, EH1 1TR GB
Please register here by Monday 5 October, 2015: http://breakfastbriefingedinburgh.eventbrite.co.uk
Recently, in catching up with a few people, these updates were mentioned so I thought it was time to send another one. With the pace of life these days, working across numerous continents and an expanding team it's sometimes hard to summaries….even share a glimpse of what is going on which is why I resort to these personal updates. I hope you find them interesting but as always if you would rather not get them then please let me know here.
Thanks and I hope you have had a great summer!
