Why Innovation for Traditional Markets is Key

Identity theft has become one of the largest issues and the biggest growing threat to ‘traditional markets’ such as payday lenders in recent years. With the increase growing significantly since lenders have began to primarily operate online – can innovation change this?  

The rise in identity fraud has increased 160% in the last 20 years, which seems an absurd increase, but with the risks of online fraud this doesn’t seem to be slowing down. It was shown that last year, 8 out of 10 identity theft cases took place online.

With digital evolvements happening each day, businesses are having to look at their strategies and processes to keep up with the changes and stay ahead of the times. This is where innovation becomes key.

It is apparent that businesses are struggling to keep up with the changes in the digital world in order to still ensure they are giving their consumers a secure and reliable service.

Innovation

Fraud is constantly on the rise, in particular impersonation fraud, with Cifas reporting that approximately 500 identities are stolen every day. Traditional, manual checks of identity documents aren’t making the cut anymore in order to battle this fraud from occurring.

To keep up with the advances in technology, businesses should look to additional, innovative ways to automatically verify a customer’s identity during the onboarding process. We aren’t saying to replace traditional processes entirely, but to use a multi-layered approach for an added layer of security and additional ID confidence.

With over 3.1 billion active social media users worldwide in 2018, most individuals do have a digital footprint. Harnessing these data sources throughout the verification processes – such as connecting existing social accounts – can help to reduce losses and also allow good customers through who businesses may have previously wrongly rejected.

Leveraging a multi-pronged approach to analyse digital data in real-time (assessing the quality and quantity, as well as looking for corroborative data) can robustly verify identity quickly and efficiently all online with less friction than traditional methods.

How we can help

Innovation is the core of what we do here at Acuant. Our identity verification solutions allow businesses to leverage the alternative data necessary to prevent fraud whilst verifying a consumer’s identity in just two clicks with an automated solution.