GBG, the global experts in digital identity, helping businesses prevent fraud and meet complex compliance requirements, released findings from its “Digital Identity Verification: Bridging Usage, Preference, Trust Gaps in Australia” market research conducted by IDC.
The research unveils a strong preference among 70% of Australian businesses to leverage managed services providers for identity verification checks, customized with their brand.
This preference is consistent across financial services, superannuation, fintech, cryptocurrencies and assets, payment, insurance, wagering, telco, and real estate industries.
A managed KYC process offers seamless digital identity verification and removes the need for businesses to spend time and resources to integrate and manage the solution themselves.
79% of telcos, gaming/wagering and real estate organizations indicate a very high preference to use vendor-hosted identity verification checks with their branding.
73% of banks and financial services indicate the same preference, while fintech/payments organizations show a slightly lower inclination at 63%.
Digital adoption and accessibility of more digital services are driving demand for frictionless identity verification
The survey of 1,502 consumers and 300 financial institutions and services firms found businesses in Australia increased their onboarding of new customers by 23% in 2021.
Fintech/payment companies, in particular, have seen a 41% increase during this period.
There has been a strong preference for digital channels, with 3 out of 4 new customers utilizing the web, mobile, or apps when onboarding a new service. This trend is expected to grow with businesses in Australia forecasting a 26% increase in new customer acquisition.
Two-thirds (67%) of Australians had created up to six new online accounts in the last 12 months, as a result of the pandemic, to continue their access to services remotely.
Michael Araneta, AVP for IDC Financial Insights and lead analyst said, “Australian businesses must be able to support the sheer amount of growth in interactions with customers.”
“This has been seen especially in customer onboarding, where the growth of new customer accounts in digital channels does not show any sign of stopping any time soon.”
“It is crucially important for businesses to ensure that the customer onboarding process is seamless so as to set the quality of customer journeys right from the get-go.”
Businesses in Australia are planning to create and release new digital services that would require identity verification as part of the onboarding process in the near future.
54% want to launch instant applications and approvals of services, instant approval for loans (53%), crypto deposits, payments and transactions (68%), open banking (54%), and facial verification for new or existing customers when onboarding or logging into a service (50%).
Carol Chris, the Regional GM of Australia and New Zealand at GBG is buoyant.
“As Australians are signing up for more digital services on a daily basis, financial institutions are required to keep pace with new customer experience expectations.”
“Managed services for digital identity verification can help significantly reduce friction in their management of the KYC process, while also making it simpler to stay compliant.”
“This is a prime and commonly overlooked business opportunity to utilize managed services to free up resources while ensuring a high standard of service and customer experience.”
“We are seeing an increase in customer inquiries to migrate the deployment of identity verification on their website to our greenID managed solution. Businesses are recalibrating to focus on developing their core competence and to utilize internal resources more effectively.”
“The trend to entrust the identity verification process to technology specialists will accelerate.”
