ID verification is an increasing issue in the digital space, from challenger banks to ecommerce. This has been exacerbated as Covid-19 forces businesses online at an increasing pace. Increasingly, mobile numbering intelligence – linking a mobile number to a person to verify who they are and find out more about them – is helping companies efficiently and confidently confirm identities. This impacts everything from KYC, to combatting fraud, to consumer insights.
That’s where TMT Analysis comes in. Specialising in mobile number intelligence, TMT offers a suite of products that helps businesses verify and find insights on their end users, reducing cost and improving the overall experience.
The decision to use mobile number data, says CEO John Wilkinson, was a no-brainer. “There were two kinds of revolutions happening at the same time,” he comments. The first was the explosion of smartphones which, even in the developing world, have become a huge part of ecommerce and everyday life. The second was the advent of Big Data – companies began to understand the value of data and the tools they could use to gain real meaning from it and improve their customer experience.
With both these aspects in mind, TMT Analysis has developed ID verification and data tools that are used by FinTechs and other businesses to help them understand who their customer is, verify they are who they say they are, stay compliant and build meaningful relationships.
The ubiquity of mobile makes it a key piece in solving the KYC puzzle. “The impact of smartphones has been dramatic,” says Wilkinson. “You have it with you all the time, which is key. The mobile phone is a good proxy of your identity because you tend to use it for most things. It has a lot of different strands of your identity.”
TMT’s Verify product is a key aspect of its offering to FinTechs and financial institutions when it comes to onboarding, customers and keeping them safe. “We have a system where a bank can see a number coming into them on a website with a transaction, ping us, and within half a second we can respond with whether it looks like a fraudulent number.” The second part of Verify involves matching names and numbers, so TMT can tell a bank if someone is using their real name and phone number.
Wilkinson says it’s important to be able to verify who a customer really is without taking away from the user experience. “If you’re looking to onboard customers online, there is a tricky decision around how much friction you should put in to check identity. If ecommerce sites asked for a copy of your passport every time you sign up, nobody would. Doing checks against phone numbers is an easy and low-cost way for FinTechs to verify immediately without slowing down customer interaction.”
Convenience versus security has always been a question for the technology world.“When any material transaction is taking place, it needs to be checked – all the payment service directives insist on active checks at those moments. So it’s about how you can know, quickly with a sensible amount of friction, that people are who they say they are?”
Regulation has had an increasing impact on the world of ID verification. “There are important aspects around privacy and GRPR where businesses have to filter through their customer relationship management (CRM) cyclically, to check customers are still active and their credentials are right. So there’s the onboarding issue as well as the constant cycle of checking. One thing we check is if the phone number a customer has added is still active, and we can trigger when it’s deactivated or ceases being used.”
GDPR has meant that checks from a privacy perspective have increased, while PSD2 has led to growth for TMT in the credit card transaction space. PSD2 states SMS can be used as part of two-factor authentication, but Wilkinson argues it may not be the best system. “Because there has been such demand, SMS has become more popular among fraudsters.
“One of the drivers for the financial community is to use better authentication tools, particularly in-app verification. Now, a lot of banks will sent a private pushed message on your app, which is more secure. Our message to FInTechs is not that two-factor authentication via SMS is the best way – it’s that if you are still doing it, you should do it with as much care as possible.”
In addition to just verifying who a customer is, there is a plethora of potential around the information that can now be gathered. “There’s a lot of hype around data,” says Wilkinson. “a lot of organisations feel if they hire 10 data scientists it will make them better… the real value is in analysing your customer set better, knowing what they’re doing online and drawing conclusions about your products. We’re not suggesting analysis for the sake of it; you need to know what you’re trying to achieve.”
In the world of customer data, TMT sees itself as a valuable partner to financial services organisations. “We’re not trying to dominate the world with complicated verification technologies. We want to integrate our data sets and products with others, so partnership is important,” Wilkinson explains.
One aspect that makes TMT a valuable partner for FinTechs is its global outlook. “One of our biggest markets is Latin America,” says Wilkinson. “We’ve got datasets in Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, and across a lot of emerging markets. For some advanced FinTechs, that’s really useful. They can buy the same products across multiple jurisdictions. With ‘big banks’ they have to deal with different products and different countries. The new online banks can offer a flat profit across multiple geographies.”
Looking to the future, high value data sets will be crucial as TMT grows – a particular focus will be government data sets including driving licenses and passports. “Particularly in LatAm, customers want a quick check that’s totally authoritative. It’s ideal if you can check the mobile number and name against an ID card. It’s about layering in some of the more complicated datasets that are out there.”
Another focus for growth will be device numbers. As well as a phone number, each phone has a unique identifier (INEI) for the device. “A big development for us is to lock the INEI against the device, adding another layer of security,” Wilkinson adds.
Finally, TMT will continue to form part of the puzzle in the now “enormous” ID verification market. “We’re seeing lots of really interesting opportunities and dynamics. Take facial recognition – it links a name to a face, but that doesn’t help unless it maps on to some other crucial information. Since mobile can interoperate with various tools there’s lots of room for partnerships in the biometric world. “The whole ID verification market is enormous,” says Wilkinson. “We’re seeing lots of really interesting opportunities and dynamics.”
