Why you should not use a DIY solution for identity verification – and what you can gain by outsourcing the process.

Onboarding is your first main contact between your company and your new customer, and is often viewed as the foundation for what dealing with your company will be like. Building loyalty and customer satisfaction right at the beginning of this relationship may be a crucial step in future collaboration. Therefore, onboarding should not be confusing or frustrating for the customers.

It is no secret that manual KYC reviews can be inefficient and costly. They are more time-consuming and not as accurate as automated solutions for identity verification. A complete identity verification should consist of:

– matching the person’s face with the image from the identity document,

– extracting information from a barcode or machine-readable zone and matching it with the information visible on the document,

– checking if the presented document was not forged or tampered with, and comparing it with the government issued templates.

An automated solution would perform all of the above in a matter of minutes. Additionally, the accuracy of manual KYC reviews would differ from individual to individual depending on the training that they completed and the ability to recognize subtle differences of many types of valid documents that are issued by each government. Plus, it involves many working hours and as such may slow the company’s growth.

According to “Account Opening and Onboarding Benchmarking Study” by Digital Banking Report “at some banks customers abandon up to 90% of new account applications prior to their completion”.

Today’s customers expect that onboarding will be as convenient and fast as possible. Anything that is too long or complicated might result in them dropping out resulting in you losing a potential customer. Customers don’t have time to lose and would often rather try a different company than deal with a frustrating onboarding process.

Streamlining the process of identity verification might be an answer to that, but then comes an important question: should you do it yourself, or leave it to a specialised company?

Below are seven points showing how leaving identity verification to experts can lower risks, improve security and cut costs.

Experts know what is best, have ready-to-use solutions and help you with integrating

Automated identity verification is possible due to the use of innovative technology: AI, Machine Learning, Face Recognition and OCR. When you spend your time and effort to build your own identity verification and fraud prevention tools, first you must know which tools to use and which would work best in your situation Then those must be developed or bought and after that integrated. Also, do not forget about all the supporting software, hardware, and systems that are needed. After all of that, there is still a risk that the chosen solution will not perform well,  and adds costs for its replacement later. Companies specialised in identity verification will simply take care of all that for you providing a market-proven solution which will simply work.

No need to worry about constant maintenance and updates

Maintaining the whole system for identity verification is expensive; it requires additional effort and resources. Creating your own system means that you will assign precious human resources and working hours for maintaining it.

Do not expose your company to more risk

Preventing fraud efficiently and, at the same time, letting in the good customers as fast as possible is a complicated endeavor. It requires sophisticated tools and knowledge to quickly distinguish between someone who wants to abuse your company and a good potential customer.

Clear structure and streamlined process for optimal results

The company specialised in identity verification will help you in creating the best, frictionless onboarding experience for your customers. You will receive a ready-to-use solution, that is already perfected – without the unnecessary tasks, bottlenecks – were every function and step was already improved and perfected.

Delivering omnichannel onboarding experience

Giving customers multiple ways of completing the identity verification process translates into a more satisfying experience. Some customers may prefer completing the process on mobile, others may prefer a more familiar environment and choose their laptop. Best identity verification services offer cross-platform solutions and (depending on your company needs) a choice between an automated solution and live video identification, both supported by human verification specialist.

Accurate evaluation

As technology and software are developing and getting better at spotting fraud, the fraudsters are also coming up with more sophisticated methods of their own. Creating your own identity verification system may end in producing many uncertain results and false positives. Experts will give you a clear answer if the new customer should be onboarded without delay or if they pose a risk for your company.

Focus on the growth of your company and leave the identity verification to experts!

Acquiring a customer takes a great deal of effort and resources. Slow or too complicated onboarding or an inaccurate evaluation can create lots of hidden costs and may damage company’s growth. With all of that in mind, would you still choose to do it yourself or would you leave it to the experts and focus on what you are the best at?

sources: “Account Opening and Onboarding Benchmarking Study” by Digital Banking Report ISSUE 249/JUNE 2017.