Sarah Rutherford

As part of our survey of 14,000 people across 14 countries, we set out to uncover customers’ attitudes to digital account openings for financial services. We also wanted to see whether people have a good understanding of why they must prove they are who they say they are. Globally, the survey showed an overwhelming majority are willing to open some kind of financia…

Open banking was unveiled to increase competition in financial services and enable third-party providers to offer valuable new services to consumers and business customers alike. But access to the opportunities open banking can offer hinges exclusively on customers consenting to share personal information with a wider number of companies. This fundamentally alters the…

With COVID-19 restricting people’s ability or willingness to engage in face-to-face interactions, banks are looking to their digital channels for continued growth. Key to providing acceptable customer experiences is the way in which banks verify that applicants are who they say they are. Identity verification, required to prevent fraud and meet eKYC regulatory require…

In my previous post I looked at what was driving synthetic identity fraud and discussed the difficulties in classifying both first-party fraud and synthetic identity fraud. Now let’s take a deeper dive into how banks and telecoms organizations can accurately identify such frauds without putting unnecessary barriers in the way of legitimate customers. An inherent ch…

Traditionally, credit application fraud has been perpetrated in two ways: First-party fraud – where the criminal uses their own identity to commit fraud, even if they obscure some details in order to prevent detection. This type of fraud is self-limiting and while fraudsters have stolen significant sums, an organization is unlikely to fall victim to the same fra…

With ambitious goals to open up banking and decimate fraud, PSD2 has taken a long time to deliver, and we’re not quite there yet. In many European Union countries, the implementation of Strong Customer Authentication will become a reality in the coming months – but are they ready? And perhaps more importantly, are their customers? PSD2 requires security measures to…

Trust goes both ways – particularly when it comes to customer identity management, and especially in the banking sector. We set out to find out whether banks are in-step with their customers when it comes to how they ensure that those opening accounts are who they say they are, and that people accessing existing accounts are the legitimate account holders. To find…

Until recently, most consumer-facing organizations have relied on username and passwords to secure accounts. However, widespread data breaches mean that password data has been leaked and can be bought by criminals on the dark web. Plus, consumers don’t like passwords as a security measure. Our recent survey found that only 40 percent of people are prepared to use u…

With the COVID-19 lockdown wiping out many face-to-face interactions, it’s hardly surprising that more of what we do has naturally moved online. For the consumer, online shopping has become the norm, but so too has opening accounts digitally; even if you look at financial accounts where many would say there is a higher risk of loss. 89 percent of UK citizens say th…

Face to face interactions are currently limited and the battleground for new customers has switched to the digital environment. Those organizations that offer fast, seamless experiences and secure on-boarding might hope to win market share – but even if financial institutions are prepared to make the switch to digital account opening are their customers ready to get o…

Security and Authentication in a Digital World For many years we’ve been reliant on usernames and passwords to secure digital accounts – but we know these aren’t adequate. Mass data breaches have made account information and passwords available to buy extremely cheaply on the dark web.  They simply don’t do the job – so what happens next? Any new authentica…

The use of biometrics is growing, to prove identity when new financial accounts are opened and when existing accounts are used. As more interactions become digital, biometric use has become acceptable to more customers. This was illustrated in a recent independent survey carried out on behalf of FICO of 5,000 people across ten countries. In all countries surveyed, mor…