The fight against fraud often feels unwinnable, but Trulioo GlobalGateway is making it a fairer fight.
GlobalGateway is a global marketplace for digital identity services that helps organisations simplify their onboarding processes and satisfy Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance requirements. Organisations can leverage the service to access identity networks from around the world, including 400 data sources from over 195 countries, mobile networks, credit bureaus, banks, governments, consumer files, business registers, biometrics and much more.
Optimising the onboarding process is crucial. While it might seem like a simple process, there are many facets that must be addressed. This process enables an organisation to verify businesses and individuals and ensure compliance requirements are being met, including determining if the entity is on watchlists, involved with money laundering or terrorist financing, and much more. Making a mistake with onboarding carries the risk of hefty compliance fines, missing signposts for fraud, missed customers or suffering reputational damage.
As onboarding covers so many areas, it can be hard to find a solution that is able to handle everything. Hal Lonas, chief technology officer at Trulioo, explained that Trulioo provides that solution, “GlobalGateway streamlines the numerous complicated layers that go into global identity verification and provides a safe and efficient solution to meet compliance requirements, in nearly every country in the world.”
One of the defining features of the platform is its worldwide coverage. Each country operates differently and has different forms of identity channels. For example, verifying an identity in the U.S. requires different information than what is needed to verify an identity for a person in Japan. As a result, the platform is designed to normalise data from hundreds of sources so it can be utilised to verify identities. This is what sets Trulioo apart – the company has verified the identity of nearly five billion people and 330 million businesses around the world – meaning companies can scale to new regions and utilise the same identity verification platform without risking interruptions, or drops in speed and accuracy.
This is made possible by the powerful technology driving GlobalGateway. It optimises and normalises data so quickly and efficiently that its customers are often surprised by how deep the solution is, Lonas added. “It’s funny as our customers often look at the solution and say, ‘well that’s actually pretty simple.’ We then have to explain that the underlying process is complex: natural language processing, AI and machine learning take all those inputs to match them to the right data source. They then gather up the responses and get them back to you in the space of a couple seconds.”
Striking a balance between speed and security
There is no one-size-fits all approach when it comes to compliance workflows, Lonas explained. When it comes to mitigating risk and offering a positive customer experience, organisations must adhere to a risk-based approach. This means that the onboarding experience is carefully tailored based on user risk profile, and the customer’s industry and jurisdiction.
In short, the organisation is able to administer the appropriate level of friction based on an individual’s unique risk profile. Ultimately, legitimate users can carry on without disruption while suspicious actors will be flagged for enhanced due diligence.
A risk-based approach helps organisations satisfy high consumer expectations, especially at the critical onboarding stage in the customer journey. Too cumbersome a process can cause abandonment, detrimentally impacting customer acquisition and revenue.
“Trulioo consumer research revealed that across marketplaces, online retailers and financial services, fewer than half of the respondents were satisfied with the process to open an account and three-quarters of people said that the online account creation process can be a deal-breaker for their future relationship with a brand.”
Kiran Kumar, director of product at Trulioo added, “In this day and age, if anything takes over 10 seconds, they’re walking away.
“Considering evolving regulations in different industries globally, organisations are keen to complete the first level of verification to quickly onboard users. Subsequently, they can monitor user activity for specific patterns or behaviours to derive insights for continuous verification,” added Kumar.
A process that finishes too abruptly might lead individuals to question if it really was a legitimate verification process. Recent findings from FICO state that nearly two-thirds of respondents expect to have to prove their identity when opening an account online.
“Security is paramount in today’s fraud climate,” said Lonas. “If the gravity of the identity verification process isn’t conveyed, a consumer might not feel secure in transacting or interacting with the company.”
Building a digital identity network
It’s no small feat that Trulioo can verify five billion consumers, but the company is on a mission to verify every single person’s identity to help advance financial inclusion.
There are two billion people left without any form of digital identification, whether it’s because of lack of documents or they live in a place with lagging identity infrastructure. These individuals can’t participate in the global digital economy, and Trulioo is up to the challenge to bring them into the fold.
The company continues to tackle this problem, working with more and more data sources in order to scale its solution. Lonas added, “It’s like one of those old time shows where they spin the plates and keep them spinning in the air on the sticks and we have hundreds going today and we want to expand that.”
This is why AI and machine learning technology is vital. Lonas explained that there are thousands of variables that go into the decision of the risk scale of a transaction or person. The AI can assess these variables within seconds and bring them to a human so they can make an informed decision.
The technology is continuously evolving, and able to spot patterns that may have previously been overlooked, and even become predictive. As it covers so many countries, it can build a 360-degree view of entities. An example Kumar provided is that if someone makes a train reservation to Paris and then makes an Airbnb reservation in the city, GlobalGateway can see this and provide a 360-degree identity posture to a company and help bolster compliance checks.
Trulioo is always looking to scale its services, but in tandem with its clients. It is always looking at the market and seeing where its clients may need help in the future. Kumar explained that Trulioo is “the perfect partner to help our customers to grow, because we want to grow with them.”
Earlier this week, Trulioo was named in the fifth annual RegTech100 list, which identifies the most innovative companies that compliance teams must know about in 2022. To view the full list and get more information on Trulioo, visit RegTech100.com.
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