Friction still plagues remote onboarding, financials turn to biometrics providers to help

Onboarding abandonment rates jumped by 23 percent from 2019 to the height of pandemic lockdowns this year, leading to nearly two out of three European consumers abandoning a financial application in the past year, according to research from Signicat.

‘The Battle to Onboard 2020: The impact of COVID-19 and beyond’ suggests that digital identity checking processes used by many institutions do not meet the expectations of users. While know your customer (KYC) and anti money-laundering (AML) rules can be challenging for businesses to comply with, the onboarding processes they use to meet them are considered “difficult” by 26 percent of those surveyed, and take longer than 28 percent expect.

Mobile first providers do a better job than traditional ones, according to 69 percent of respondents.

Signicat also says an era of common ‘learned helplessness,’ in which consumers feel they do not have alternative options to a negative experience, is fading with the increase in popularity of digital-first accounts. Generation Z in particular (18 to 24-year-olds) are particularly unwilling to put up with digital onboarding that is not fast, and they will represent a third of the world’s consumers by the end of the 2020s.

Meanwhile Finnish investment services firm Alexandria Pankkiiriliike Oyj has chosen Signicat’s digital signature solutions to enable remote identity verification, according to a separate company announcement.

Alexandria will deploy Signicat’s Sign Portal and API at all 30 of its branch offices across Finland, and integrate them into its digital service channels. The company selected Signicat’s electronic signature solutions after evaluating various solutions on the market to provide advisors with an easy-to-use signing tool, the announcement states, allowing investing or banking agreements to be signed with Finnish Trust Network Bank IDs or Mobile Certificates. Alexandria is also planning to develop a signature solution based on Singicat interfaces for digital customer channels.

iDenfy signs up global fintech

Inclusive financial technology firm PanPay has chosen iDenfy to screen and verify its customers with selfie biometric matches against ID documents for secure remote onboarding.

PanPay provides multi-currency accounts, e-commerce collections, worldwide payments and currency exchange for consumers and businesses around the world.

iDenfy will verify user identities with a combination of facial recognition, biometric liveness checking, and ID verification utilizing artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data and optical character recognition.

“We are delighted to start our cooperation with iDenfy. We found iDenfy solution quality is very good while the user experience is smooth and easy,” says PanPay CEO Justas Valentinavicius. “PanPay believes cooperation with iDenfy will help our business development with EU customers.”

“We firmly believe that our advanced identity verification solutions will help PanPay provide their customers with a great experience when onboarding,” states Domantas Ciulde, CEO of iDenfy. “We will offer all the available identity verification solutions so that they can win the trust of more European e-commerce sellers and traders.”

Jumio considers remote onboarding potential for insurance industry

Jumio APAC VP Frederic Ho writes in a Forbes brandvoice article that digital onboarding and remote KYC processes are poised to shake up the insurance industry.

Not only has the pandemic disrupted the traditional tendency for insurance to be sold face-to-face, rather than purchased remotely, but economic factors like the rise of the gig economy have created new markets, such as for short-term coverage for employees.

To meet the shifted needs of the industry, insurers can make use of the same biometric authentication and digital identity verification technologies used by the financial services industry for KYC, in particular government ID verification with selfie biometrics.

Regulators appear to recognize the importance of enabling these remote transactions, Ho writes, which could lead to an opportunity for those insurers prepared to embrace digital transformation.

Article Topics

AML  |  biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  financial services  |  iDenfy  |  identity verification  |  Jumio  |  KYC  |  onboarding  |  remote authentication  |  Signicat