Day Zero digital identity verification company Socure, recently announced the launch of “Intelligent KYC,” a solution that aims to unlock scale and speed in customer acquisition, auto-approval rates and fewer manual reviews. The solution incorporates advanced graph analytics and unsupervised ML to produce actionable insights. Socure has shared that businesses leveraging KYC from Socure can achieve up to 20% higher auto-approvals in comparison to legacy IDV systems.

“In the digital-first world, compliance teams need hyper-accuracy in their use of KYC tools without introducing more friction for customers or costly reviews for their operations teams,” said Socure CEO Tom Thimot. “Intelligent KYC is the industry’s most sophisticated KYC solution and will push our clients far beyond check-box compliance.”

Socure’s History and Mission

Founded nearly eight years ago, the company has grown to over 250 customers, has garnered multiple rounds of funding and has grown as a service to include 3 of the 5 largest banks. The company aims to simultaneously solve two problems all together:

1. Is the ID presented valid?
2. Is that who they say they are?

“An intelligent KYC really tries to go beyond just saying first, last, address, country, date of birth, SSN,” said Thimot. “They all match and say, ‘How can intelligence really interpret that this is who they say are?’ And those are the two cornerstones to our product suite.”

Using Bigger Data for Bigger Impact

In the past, KYC primarily relied on credit bureau data and analytics approaches that failed to verify important segments of the population such as thin-file millennials or new-to-country individuals. Socure’s enhanced ML solution incorporates a massive number of data sources that include more than 310 million entities and three billion records from credit header and inquiry, utility, telecom and other authoritative sources.

Intelligent KYC is offered both individually and as part of an end-to-end integrated engine for identity fraud, AML and digital document verification. Combining the ID+ KYC with fraud risk assessment can increase accuracy and auto-acceptance with a simultaneous reduction to fraud losses.

“A strong KYC solution powered by advanced analytics can drive better results for a variety of institutions while removing friction for customers,” said Charles Subrt, Analyst at research group Aite. “With cybercriminals becoming increasingly sophisticated, firms must continue to elevate KYC through innovation to keep pace.”

Socure’s technology is also delivered via a REST API. As a result, in comparison to credit bureaus or traditional legacy providers that are able to auto-approve 55%-60% of applicants, Socure’s technology is able to auto-approve 90% of them. This provides a huge value add for its users, as the REST API can automatically update for users to get the latest solution as Socure continues to refine the product.

The Demand for Digital Identity

With the current COVID-19 pandemic in place, the demand for digital identity in both financial institutions and transactions has grown tremendously. From stimulus checks to PPP loans, many individuals and organizations are opening new bank accounts. However, without intelligence behind KYC, potential customers and consumers face friction with and cannot conduct transactions due to unknown external data such as addresses. However, Socure adds a second layer of intelligence with machine learning that allows these consumers to go ahead and receive approval without these barriers and extra steps.

“You can go to a lot of different places to gain a new digital bank account, to gain different access to digital credit. And if you push friction at the people, they’re going to switch. They’re going to click on the next link; they’re going to go away from your link,” said Thimot. “And so, clearly, we’re seeing people that are signing up in large numbers, whether it’s to open an investment account, open a bank account, get access to credit. It’s all digital now.”

Future Steps for Socure’s Technology

Socure’s long-term vision is to primarily focus on identity and provide the necessary digital identity tools for our world to eliminate identity fraud to make sure that each and every individual is who they say they are. In addition, the company hopes to become the single source in the United States that everyone can trust. 

Socure CEO Tom Thimot also believes that digital businesses are a potential avenue for the future of the financial sector. 

“Just look at some of the companies that haven’t come yet around to the fact that they need to use artificial intelligence to solve this problem. They’re pushing friction, and the consumer sees that. They may not understand why. “Why do you want me to answer these five questions about where I once lived and what kind of car I had?” As opposed to, “Just give me a checkmark and give me my access to the service I’m looking for.” And so, I think you’re going to see [FinTechs] become serious challenges to some of the established financial services businesses. And likewise, in every other business.”

For more information, visit socure.com or tune into Socure’s webinar—”Intelligent KYC: Can Compliance Drive Better Customer Experience?”—at socure.com/webinars.