Providing confidence in identity

Stealing or creating fictitious identities and identity theft in general, is a major issue, globally. When an organisation interacts with a potential customer, it is vital it has confidence that the person in front of them or on the phone is actually who they say they are.

The development of Experian’s Global Authenticate strategy has identified an opportunity to develop a system that can be rolled out to the markets and countries around the world, places where there is the potential demand for using electronic data as an alternative to documentary evidence to satisfy the requirement to authenticate an individual’s identity. This requirement may come from the local regulator, for example, as part of an Anti Money Laundering (AML) regime, or simply to mitigate the risk of identity fraud to the organisation.

Authenticating identities using electronic data is considerably cheaper than processing documents, but this is not the only benefit. Because fake documents can be easily obtained but difficult to spot, the use of electronic data provides a more robust measure of identity. A potential customer can’t fraudulently establish six years of tracked historical data overnight, so if someone claims to have lived at their address for six years and we can corroborate that claim with Credit Bureau or Credit Reference Agency data, then that provides more confidence in their identity.

"Over a quarter of all people have been victims of identity theft and that it costs the global economy billions of Euros each year..."

When applying online for a product or service, the last thing your potential customers want is to be offered the facility on condition that they send in their passport and utility bill. Apart from it being inconsistent with the online experience, it means that they will have to wait longer to receive the facility and that they will have to release sensitive documents and send them through the post, which despite the availability of registered delivery services, still cannot guarantee their delivery, to you or back to them. It is also worth noting that if you, the organisation, sends documents back via registered post, then that in itself is likely to cost more than the electronic authenticate check!

The first delivery of the Global Authenticate strategy will be the Universal ID Check. This will provide a ‘light touch’ identity check and will cover 24 countries from day one. These countries will be mainly European but will also include Canada, US and Australia.

Contact us for further discussions about this article

Jim Lound

Product Director - Fraud & Identity Solutions

Decision Analytics

Experian