Logistics has a unique compliance challenge; digital ID can help: Trustd CEO

For the logistics industry, identity checks are frequent, and the stakes are high. That makes the ability to tie ID document and selfie biometrics-based identity verification to data sources like business registries crucial, Trustd CEO Lyall Cresswell tells Biometric Update in an interview.

The company uses biometrics and cryptographic binding to ensure “the bearer is the owner” of a litany of credentials required to ensure safety and regulatory compliance.

Cresswell founded the company based on his experience with 25 year-old freight tech platform TEG.

TEG provides a digital platform for logistics and road transport management, and introduced its mobile app back in 2004. It is used by brokers and the full range of carriers, Cresswell explains, from the big names in road transport familiar from highway, through the mid market, to the “massive, massive long tail” of smaller trucking operations.

TEG’s platform handles orders, proof of delivery, scanning, photography, invoicing, payments and settlements, and provides integration with a range of applications, including vehicle tracking.

“Your introducing thousands of parties that transact with one another,” Cresswell says. “It all becomes quite onerous to deal with the overhead of onboarding, compliance, even just setting them up with accounting.”

It was when Lyall saw biometric onboarding for a UK neobank around 2018 that the idea for Trustd was born. Like neobanks, Trustd works with remote partners through the internet.

KY-everything

Logistics operations entail confirming the business placing the order (KYB) as well as identity verification for the individual. But it also requires confirmation of their authorization for the specific job, and then “you’ve got a whole collateral of certification and qualifications” on top of that, Cresswell explains.

That means businesses need to be able to check qualifications with granular detail. There is insurance, certifications (such as to handle dangerous goods) and licenses, all with expiry dates. A driver could pick up penalty points on their license for a traffic infraction between one delivery and the next, and lose a required qualification.

“We wanted to be able to manage all of the different documentation that goes not just to support the business entity, but also the certification, for example insurances, every type of business in our industry has different types of insurances which you can be expected to have,” Creswell says.

Trustd announced a partnership with logistics industry insurance provider Business Choice Direct (BCD) on Wednesday to launch what the partners say is the first use of verifiable insurance credentials in the sector.

Dangerous goods handling on its own is complex. Cresswell notes that there are different requirements for different shipment volumes, and the person requesting the shipment of dangerous goods also must have qualifications. “You can see how you start to end up with a much more comprehensive understanding of exactly who you’re dealing with,” he notes.

Ten thousand businesses now ensure their compliance with the many security requirements and regulations impacting logistics through Trustd. TEG and Trustd are now comprehensively integrated, Creswell says, “but that’s simply a kind of template for any platform that has that similar requirement.”

Businesses in the UK can carry out Right to Work checks with Trustd, following its DIATF certification earlier this year. These checks are increasingly common in logistics workflows, Cresswell says, and again, can be more complicated than apparent, as an owner-operator can be several people, for instance.

Given the application, Cresswell is not worried about potential market changes like the introduction of a GOV.UK mobile driver’s license (mDL).

“If you’ve already got an mDL, brilliant. And as long as, as an accredited identity services provider, we can accept that, great! I’ll consume that. Because that just takes one piece of friction out of the journey.”

In the meantime, Trustd uses technology from GBG and other vendors to perform IDV.

It was a painful process to find and integrate biometrics and digital identity proofing partners in the early days of Trustd’s development. “The APIs at that point were very limited or non-existent,” Cresswell recalls. The company had to cycle through several providers along the way to its current technology.

Persistent identity and dynamic status

Cresswell recently gave several lectures for business classes in London, and was surprised at the very low awareness of digital identity he found. Because of this, he thinks “anything which really brings it into everyday uses and common parlance can be helpful.”

While a persistent digital identity is one key to the Trustd platform, delegated authority is dynamic, so Trustd must be too.  Delegated authority changes variously – some deliveries are the same every time, some drivers interact with different businesses and people every day.

The same goes for the dynamism of qualification. The BCD integration announcement notes that nearly 30 percent of insurance policies are cancelled per month, so manual paperwork checks may not ensure current compliance.

And the same driver may make deliveries in different jurisdictions, with different rules. Turstd has customers in the EU and U.S., and Cresswell notes the intricacies of different levels of disclosure about business data in each state.

So even as the Trustd’s technology stack stabilizes, the complexity it must handle always increases. Cresswell is keeping abreast of developments with eIDAS 2.0, for instance.

Because whoever and wherever deliveries occur, Cresswell says, “I want to know, at the end of the day, who’s carrying my freight.”

Article Topics

biometric binding  |  DIATF certification  |  document verification  |  identity verification  |  selfie biometrics  |  Trustd