Four industries that are reaping the benefits of biometric identity verification

This a guest post by Carla van Straten, Marketing Manager at Bitventure.

Biometric identity verification for optimised and secure customer onboarding is trending across multiple industries globally. The deployment of quick and easy-to-use applications for identification, verification, and end-to-end digital onboarding, is what consumers have now come to expect from service providers.

Businesses in the financial services industry, medical industry, recruitment industry and telecommunications industry are at the forefront of deploying advanced verification and onboarding technologies. Such businesses have come to realize how crucial it is to get onboarding right, and chose to invest in the multiple benefits that these technologies have to offer.

Financial services industry

Banks and other businesses in the financial sector have been obliged to comply with KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) regulations for years. These processes, however, have become synonymous with friction and frustration as institutions had to increase onboarding security for compliance. Customers having to supply an excess of paper documentation and personal information to open new accounts results in unpleasant experiences. The new benchmark is to onboard new banking customers safely, and in real-time, through digital and automated methods.

The most optimal solution, eKYC, refers to Electronic Know Your Customer checks. These checks include the digital verification of a customer’s identity and personal data. Through easy-to-use software applications, a client’s identity is confirmed in real-time, by simply providing an ID number and conducting a biometric face or fingerprint scan.

Facial recognition applications, that allow customers to verify themselves via a selfie photo and a liveness video, confirm the identities of new customers in seconds. Fingerprint recognition software provides a solution to verify identities through the same process, yet via a single thumb scan. New customers can thereby open accounts without any annoyances, and service providers can rest assured that their customers can be trusted.

Medical industry

Just like it is imperative to know your customers, it is as crucial to know the true identities of patients and scheme members. A similar process to eKYC in banks is being adopted in healthcare to ensure that medical aid schemes, healthcare centres and hospitals are interacting with low-risk individuals who are who they claim to be.

Patients are currently being assisted and onboarded faster, without the need to fill out paper forms, through using biometric verification methods. Additionally, such a patient’s or member’s medical records are now protected and made available through biometric face-scanning software, allowing them to abandon password authentication that no longer proves sufficient in protecting their records.

Biometric verification for the use in access control is also being deployed for hospital staff entry/exit. Through facial recognition software, staff now access the areas they need to without having to touch a surface at all, preventing the spread of viruses.

In emergency situations, specifically, where patients might be unable to communicate, biometric patient verification and enrollment offers the solution to quick patient submissions – a solution that the industry has been waiting for.

Recruitment industry

New-hire identity verification has become a priority in the recruitment industry. Verifying the identities of candidates at the start of the hiring process discourages fraudsters from trying to apply. Biometric verification is offering solutions and benefits that manual paper-based identification procedures fell short on. Improved accuracy of data, generated from trusted sources, has proved that going the biometric route is the most reliable way of verification.

HR staff are now able to verify candidates by using facial recognition applications that involve taking a selfie image or a liveness face scan. Recruitment agencies across the globe are improving employee retention with a secure and optimised digital onboarding process backed by biometrics. Through adopting these procedures, it shows that organisations take the safety of their customers and other employees seriously.

Telecommunications industry

Consumer contract fraud has been particularly problematic in the telecommunications industry, as fraudsters provide false identification and banking details in order to obtain devices illegally.
Adding insult to injury, many telcos have been losing out on opportunities to onboard customers online from remote locations due to an inability to successfully verify such prospects. This has specifically posed an issue during lockdown where social distancing had to be initiated by many retailers across the world.

Since the integration of fingerprint and facial biometric verification software, telcos have reported seeing an 85% reduction in monthly fraudulent activities and as much as a 54% revenue growth per annum due to savings on fraudulent transactions and onboarding costs. Telcos are now using technology such as digital ID document verification, fingerprint Verification and facial verification to confirm identities.

Since all such software applications allow for onboarding customers online via sophisticated user portals, telcos are benefitting from the opportunity to onboard remotely and to not limit themselves by their retail infrastructure. They are broadening their customer base and rendering each new contract issued an effort-less and 100% secure transaction.

Overcoming cross-industry obstacles

In various surveys conducted, it is reported that as much at 40% of individuals abandon interactions due to time-consuming and complicated processes that seem risky. Paper-based manual processes are not enough to ensure the safe, quick, seamless onboarding of low-risk customers, employees, patients, and members. It’s time to follow in the footsteps of market-leading businesses from various industries and embrace digital transformation. Biometric identity verification is no longer the future of onboarding – it is a current, widely deployed innovation that guarantees business growth.

About the author

Carla van Straten is the Marketing Manager at the verification software solutions company, Bitventure.

DISCLAIMER: Biometric Update’s Industry Insights are submitted content. The views expressed in this post are that of the author, and don’t necessarily reflect the views of Biometric Update.

Article Topics

background checks  |  biometric identification  |  biometric liveness detection  |  biometrics  |  Bitventure  |  financial services  |  identity verification  |  KYC  |  patient identification  |  telecom