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Identity verification plays a crucial role in legal, real estate, accounting, and several other industries dealing with numerous clients and data assets.
These industries have established their own systems for validating identities and complying with Anti-Money Laundering (AML)/Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) laws but vary largely in their tools, methods, and levels of effectiveness.
If you’re looking to improve your identity verification workflows, this guide is for you.
We’ll walk you through how that process works, how an online system benefits you, how it helps with your regulatory compliance, and how to choose the best identity verification solution for your company.
How the Identity Verification Process Works
Organizations employ various online and offline procedures to verify their clients’ identities.
Traditional face-to-face processes require the person to appear in an institution’s office building and present their identity documents (e.g., passport, birth certificate, officially recognized ID cards, billing statements, etc.).
The attending agent checks if photographs displayed on the files resemble the individual’s face performing confidential transactions.
The agent photocopies the documents, asks the individual to fill out and sign necessary forms, and processes the identified user’s requests.
Organisations can also authenticate identities electronically. However, without the physical places, meet-ups, and key players, identity verification processes take on different workflows and methods typically involving computers or mobile gadgets with cameras and internet connectivity.
Here’s an example:
The user visits the company website, app, or any other digital platform for registering, transacting, and doing other account-related actions. Then they allow their devices to use their cameras and microphones for the company’s identity verification process.
Next, the online platform asks the person to present the identity document on both sides, input necessary details, scans the files, and authenticates them. Others even ask users to sign electronically straight from the device.
The user now looks at the camera and shows his face for further validation. The digital platform alone can scan this, but other companies have a different workflow where trained agents certify the video or photograph.
With the identity recognition methods conducted, the platform then validates the user’s credentials and claims.
To learn more about the processes involved in identity verification, read our comprehensive guide on how identity verification works.
Benefits of Online Identity Verification
Conducting digital identity verification rather than in-person brings untold benefits to businesses. Below are some glaring advantages of online identity verification.
1. Lower operational and administrative overheads
Manually processing identity documents eats up your employees’ time, effort, and productivity. With online identity verification systems, you can bypass all that tedious work and constant back-and-forth communication.
You can reduce the number of steps, materials, training sessions, and your agents can avoid working on routine tasks. You can empower them to focus on business-critical assignments and allot your resources to more profitable activities when identity verifications are done digitally.
2. Improve client experience, trust, and satisfaction
Safer and more efficient authentication systems remove friction in your identity verification processes and shorten their length and duration.
When users go through the identity verification steps faster, easier, and more smoothly, they end up having a pleasant experience with your brand. This increases their likelihood of becoming repeat or loyal customers and recommending your business to their network.
3. Avoid violating laws and their repercussions
Several industries follow the AML and other applicable regulations when authenticating their clients’ identities and to ensure their transactions aren’t illegal.
These laws protect organizations from mishandling sensitive consumer information and assets and making them accessible to criminals. If you experience breaches and are found to have weak identity authentication systems, you expose yourself to steep fines and other penalties, lawsuits, and a tarnished reputation.
Consequently, your clients and business partners lose their trust in your business, which could easily hurt your bottomline and business growth.
4. Safeguard your business from illegal activities
Online authentication systems have powerful functionalities -- such as deep learning algorithms, robust databases, and advanced security capabilities -- that enforce more comprehensive identity examination methods than human-performed measures.
For example, they can detect a person’s facial points and slight changes to it, cross-check across multiple data sources, recognize identity by their unique body traits, etc.
This reduces the risk of human error and bolsters your capability to secure your business, especially from sophisticated criminal activities.
In our post, The Benefits of Online Identity Verification, we dive into greater detail how businesses can benefit significantly from performing identity verification online compared to the traditional face-to-face method.
How Online Identity Verification Services Make Regulatory Compliance Easier
Reliable online identity verification systems simplify your regulatory adherence. They involve enhanced security and automation technologies, allowing you to accomplish identity verification tasks efficiently and accurately.
Here at Raytio, our all-in-one digital solution is designed to simplify your AML compliance, including client onboarding and auditing, securely and thoroughly.
Our solution automatically and rigidly follows the mandated workflows and checklists for your Know Your Customer (KYC) or Customer Due Diligence (CDD) processes, credit and PEP checks, etc.
We also allow you to validate your clients’ data with trustworthy sources and store, access, back up, and share historical identity information (using encryption for safer transmission).
By tapping our digital identity proofing services, you offload your security burdens, routine identity verification activities, and compliance maintenance -- all while preventing money laundering and identity and financial fraud.
To understand the role online identity verification plays in helping companies with regulatory adherence, check out our guide on how online identity verification services make regulatory compliance easier.
How to Choose the Right Online Identity Verification Solution
To select the best identity verification solution for your business, consider these recommended features and how our Raytio solution meets your needs:
1. Compliance and security
Violating AML/CFT and failing to detect fraudulent identities have grave repercussions for your business. Guaranteeing your regulatory compliance and business security is a top priority feature identity verification solutions must possess.
Raytio has privacy-first, end-to-end encryption technologies, extensive biometric exams and data cross-checks, among others, to ensure you can safely perform your transactions and identity proofing.
2. Comprehensive database
A wide range of identity information from numerous documents and institutions is critical to identity fraud prevention. Raytio offers you precisely that with our exhaustive list of trustworthy data sources.
3. User-friendliness
Choose online identity verification companies that give you airtight security features without compromising user experience. Raytio has an easy-to-use client portal, low- to no-code forms, developer-friendly SDKs, APIs, and webhooks, etc. for straightforward integration of your business systems, data access, form fulfillment, and more.
4. Automation and digitization
Digital authentication systems execute efficiency by eliminating paper-based and manual procedures. Check out which among your business workflows can be automated by the identity verification solutions you’re eyeing. Raytio can digitize and instantly implement several of your repetitive AML/KYC compliance tasks.
Choosing the best identity verification company for your business doesn’t have to be complicated. Read our guide on How to Choose the Right Online Identity Verification Solution to understand better the qualities to look out for when choosing an identity verification company.
What’s Next?
Protect your business and clients by streamlining, improving, and revolutionizing your identity verification processes with reliable digital technologies.
Our solution helps ensure and preserve your AML compliance, business accuracy and efficiency, data and revenue security, and client satisfaction, giving you peace of mind knowing that your identity security systems are unassailable and reliable.
This is our first post in our Online Identity Verification series. You can find the others listed below:
Part 2: Benefits of Online Identity Verification
Part 3: How the Identity Verification Process Works Online
Part 4: How Digital Identity Verification Services Make Regulatory Compliance Easier