The financial sector is competing over who will be the customer’s choice in terms of convenience, security, and overall customer experience. They go for innovations that can help them achieve the factors for customer preferences. With technology and the internet, several practices make the banking and financial industry’s transaction stress-free and rapidly. This era of technology advancement has carried us from the traditional ways of identity verification to the online customer identity and verification methods. The traditional way has been a face-to-face event, and the online method has eradicated the use of a paper-based on-boarding process. What method gives the capability for each customer to be at ease?

Traditional ID Verification

Before high-end gadgets and mobile banking, there exist customer onboarding personally done in bank branches. Though today some banks still have these kinds of processes, more and more people are beginning to fancy online transactions.

Personal bank visits to verify your identity are a time-consuming process. Especially now that most of the bank and financial services’ customers are millennials and Gen-Zers who prefer transactions on-screen. In this age range, they want everything to be faster as they have other ssential things to do like study, work on an 8-to-5 job, or take care of a child to lookout. Somehow, a visit to a bank and dealing with long queues are terribly annoying.

The traditional ID verification process is when a customer goes into a bank branch to open an account. A bank representative assigned at the account opening of the customer will hand over a form to be filled in, and ask for customer IDs and that’s it. This method is kind of outdated now, and the slow onboarding process negatively affects the customer experience.

Live Assisted Video KYC

Online verification provides a faster transaction than the traditional bank visit. Wherever you are as long as you have a mobile phone and an internet connection, you can open a new account and be verified virtually. The live assisted video KYC is an online alternative to the existing Know Your Customer (KYC) mandatory process in the financial industry. Customer onboarding can be done remotely using the live assisted video KYC where the customer’s photo and the proof of identity were captured during the online video session.

There is a link provided for customers to connect with a representative for the live video customer onboarding. The customer can open the link on a desktop web browser or a mobile device. When the call is connected, the representative will start with the KYC verification process, ensuring that the customer in possession of identity documents is the same person they claim to be. The video is also recorded throughout the session.

With the live assisted video KYC, onboarding customers can be done remotely, no need for them to wait in line at the bank branch. Unlike the traditional method, this can be completed at the convenience of the customer’s home.

Biometric Checks

Many companies incorporate the use of facial recognition software in their business. The use of biometrics in the industry provides businesses the advantage by streamlining the digital customer onboarding. It makes the identity proofing more robust and secure by preventing identity theft and other fraudulent activities. So what if a fraudster got hold of someone’s identification documents? How can the biometric identify that the fraudster is not the real owner of the IDs?

Biometrics is another way to implement a confidential remote verification, wherein an AI-powered system verifies the identity of a customer through a “live-ness” detection and facial recognition. It matches the customer’s live selfie with the photo on their provided government IDs. With the use of the camera, the system identifies if the image of the customer in real-time and detects the liveness by analyzing the facial characteristics. It requests the user to blink, smile, open mouth, tilt head, head pose, etc., to test if the customer is physically present during the process. No space left for a fraud to use the IDs to get in.

Online Process for Business Continuity

This pandemic does not only affect public health but also of the economy’s health globally. Brick and mortar businesses are deeply affected. Factories shut down, production and shipments were canceled, and there is a decline in foot traffic as everyone is not allowed to go out. Digital transactions are the only way to ensure that you can still go on with business and financial processes without setting foot outside.

And as everyone is helping to save the world by just staying at home, the biometric and liveness detection for digital onboarding and remote banking becomes the top hot topic in the industry. Aside from preventing fraudulent activities and providing convenience for customers, these online processes enable business to continue serving amid pandemic crisis like COVID-19.