There is a lot of attention on financial crime, so businesses and financial institutions are feeling the pressure. The UK holds organisations criminally liable, plus banks must now compensate online fraud victims up to £85,000.
In today’s digital age, robust identity verification is more critical than ever. Traditional KYC methods are often cumbersome and vulnerable to fraud.
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A webinar titled ‘Beyond KYC: How Standard Bank is revolutionising identity verification with biometrics’, looked into how Standard Bank is leveraging biometrics on its OneHub platform to provide a secure, efficient and user-friendly KYC experience.
This webinar consisted of Paul Jackson, Vice President of Market Intelligence at iProov, Jonathan Lamb, Head of Channel & Partnerships, CIB Digital at Standard Bank, Andrew Bud, Founder and CEO of iProov and Gur Geva, Founder and CEO of iiDENTFii.
Standard Bank is empowering its customers on its OneHub platform to go beyond basic KYC compliance. Biometrics enhances security, reduces fraud and improves user experience. It is a word that is being used more and more frequently in the banking and payments world, a trend that is expected to continue.
RBI has previously reported on iProov and how biometrics is creating a decentralised digital identity.
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By GlobalDataThe OneHub platform consolidates all the Standard Bank Corporate & Investment Banking digital solutions and offerings into a single place to be easily accessible.
iiDENTIFii partners with iProov on the continent and has a long-standing strategic relationship with Standard Bank, which the members of the panel spoke about with great positivity.
Lamb explored the background and evolution of OneHub. He said: “About four years ago, the corporate investment banking side of the group set up a new team, which I was privileged enough to join, called CIB Digital. We really focus on a real customer-focused approach to ensuring that we are a large part of our client’s financial workflows. The first thing we were asked to look at is, what should it look like if you’re going to digitally engage with individuals working for a client? Could we help our clients with things that are slightly further away from our traditional product sector? Could we embrace partnerships with innovative fintechs?”
Lamb went further into this engagement with clients and partners, stating: “We went out and spoke to a number of our clients, What are Chief Information Officers, Chief Digital Officers, heads of risk asking? What keeps them up at night? Managing risk is top of mind of all participants around the C-suite. It leans towards technical digitisation and automation. We quickly found that knowing who you’re doing business with, who your suppliers are and confirming the identity of the people you’re engaging with remotely became critical problem statements.”
The role of identity verification in banking and beyond
Lamb evaluated the partnership between iiDENTIFii, saying: “We engaged with iiDENTIFii, one of the early fintechs the bank worked with, for biometric identity verification. We realised it wasn’t exactly the same as what our clients are looking for, but it’s quite close. We entered into a new relationship with iiDENTIFii and created a model where we could offer their technology to our corporate client base, not just use it internally. Selling or convincing a big business to adopt something innovative, like tech-heavy solutions, is not easy it’s a long sale. Buying capability and embedding it into an organisation is a big thing to do.
“It’s not a single person that makes the decision. Often, the decision-makers don’t use the technology. Once it’s in, it’s very difficult to get it on. So we underestimated that. But if you keep believing that you can help a client solve a problem with tech that you know and trust yourself, and you keep chipping away at it, eventually you do. One of the things we’ve learned is that when we first started, we tried to represent iiDENTIFii to our clients without their team in the room, now all of our partners are in the room with us.”
Gur Geva of iiDENTIFii explained the origins of the company, and how the need for protect goes beyond the banking world: “iProov and iiDENTIFII got together because we started the business when my daughter was one year old. We started it because we had taught her to walk the park. A couple of weeks later, our au pair was offered $2,000 in exchange for the child. We started with a core mission to stop child trafficking, money laundering and identity theft, They have an unbelievably deep empathy for their partners, their customers and the end customer.”
On iProov’s commitment to creating reliable biometric protection, Andrew Bud of iProov added: “We have 200 people in iProov dedicated to providing genuine presence and assurance of facial biometrics.”
Successful use cases
Looking at successful use cases that has come from the work between Standard Bank and iiDENTIFii. Lamb said: “We worked with Glencore in the DRC to help digitally engage their frontline workforce, the solution included biometric liveness verification through iiDENTIFii, Vodacom’s network, and a tailored app called Moja. The impact has been tangible for employees. In South Africa, Robin Hood has built a solution to solve the unclaimed benefits problem. It uses trusted data and iiDENTIFii’s biometric verification to ensure the rightful recipient gets the assets they’re owed.”
Looking ahead to the future, Lamb added: “We’re seeing opportunity across industries, with partners like iiDENTIFii and others. We’re going to focus on solving impactful industry-wide problems like unclaimed benefits and digital inclusion. The closer the problem is to financial services, the more equipped we are to solve it. But we’re also exploring solutions beyond financial services.”
