May 2016 | Fraud Prevention

Identity checks

For both security reasons and to meet your Client Due Diligence obligations you need to carry out identity checking on your customers. Processes can be long-winded you may have to ask your customers to complete certain tasks or provide extra information, something they might find intrusive and a hassle. It doesn’t have to be that way – here are three things that can help you with identity checking that will also be wins for customer service.

1. Ditch the paper

Traditionally identity checking has been based on asking customers to provide paper based proofs of their identity, in the form of passports, bank statements and utility bills. This is time consuming for customers and in this age on of online accounts they may not even have the documents readily available. In many cases electronic identity checking is a permitted alternative to documentary evidence. Online validation involves checking information supplied by your customer to known information about them from reliable and trusted data providers. Electronic identity checking has been accepted as a viable alternative across a wide range of industries including financial services, insurance, legal and retail.

2. Reduce the time it takes

As already mentioned asking for paper-based proofs lengthens the time it takes for you to register new customers, other forms of identity checking can also add time to the process. Asking customers for additional information or to carry out additional steps such as a biometric scan can also add to the friction for your customers. To reduce friction it is necessary to incorporate your identity checks into the process already in place. For example if they are using a finger print scan to access the device they use to manage their account can that same scan offer you authentication? Identity checking solutions that are invisible and work in real-time can also be used. For example recognising the devices your customers are using to access their accounts and understanding how those devices behave can provide the level of assurance you need to recognise good customers and avoid fraud.

3. Remember – most of your customers aren’t fraudsters!

The vast majority of your customers are of course opening and using their accounts for completely legitimate reasons, of course you want to offer them the best possible service as soon as possible. There are two strategies that can help you with that, firstly identify ‘good’ customers as soon as possible and speed them on their way to what they want. Secondly do whatever can be done to reduce false positives, false positives are incidents where the potential for fraud is flagged wrongly. Reducing false positives is a matter of balancing the solutions you use and accurately configuring them to allow the highest possible ‘pass’ rate without increasing your fraud risk to unacceptable levels. This is an extremely difficult balancing act that requires you to have a comprehensive understanding of your customer base as well as having solutions in place that can be configured to exactly the way you need them to work.

Many businesses need to take a layered approach to identity checking, employing multiple, different tools to check identity, CrossCore, our open platform is designed to help you manage multiple identity checking and fraud preventions solutions in a single platform with consistent workflows and decisioning.  Follow this link for more information and to learn how we can help.