Digital onboarding and know-your-customer (KYC) processes are revolutionizing business customer identification. These fully remote, automated solutions make it easy to securely retrieve a customer’s identity and personal information needed to comply with regulations and mitigate fraud risk. 

With digital onboarding, customers can easily verify their identity from anywhere through their mobile device or computer. They simply start the onboarding process and electronically share copies of their ID documents and other identifying information, saving customers from having to physically visit a branch or office.

For businesses, digital onboarding provides numerous benefits:

• Stay compliant with AML, KYC, and data regulations like GDPR.
• Reduce the risk of false or stolen identities with document and biometric checks.
• Save time and costs compared to manual review processes.
• Provide customers with a smooth, mobile-friendly onboarding experience.
• Maintain security standards with encrypted data transfers.
• Continuously update customer data instead of periodic reviews.

By adopting digital onboarding, companies can focus on their core business while keeping customer data safe, secure, and compliant. The automated workflows reduce manual work so teams can handle higher volumes without additional overhead.

Digital Onboarding Process

Digital onboarding typically involves the following steps:

• The customer initiates the onboarding process on the company’s website or mobile app. This can include entering basic information like name, email, or phone number.
• The customer is prompted to upload or take a photo of their government-issued ID card. 
• The AI-powered system extracts key identity data from the ID, including name, date of birth, ID number, expiration date, etc. 
• Additional checks may be done to verify the authenticity of the ID document itself. This can involve checking security features present in the ID against known standards.
• The customer’s selfie or live video is captured and matched against the photo from the ID document to ensure it is the same person. Advanced facial recognition and liveness detection are used.
• Once identity is verified, other KYC checks can be done according to business needs.
• Finally, the onboarding process is complete once all checks have passed. The business receives the data about a client.

The key benefit is that the entire process is digital and automated and can be completed by the customer remotely in minutes. 

Regulatory Requirements

Digital onboarding solutions must comply with regulations regarding legally valid remote identification and anti-money laundering (AML). The EU member states have enacted laws regulating the minimum technical requirements for digital and remote client identity verification for AML compliance. 

For example, compared to the previous Regulation, the new Croatian Regulation on Remote Client Onboarding enables digital onboarding without compromising identity verification quality. Provisions that undermined market competition have been removed (e.g., by recognizing only specific citizen actions for proving liveness as acceptable, such as ’tilt your head left-right’ or ‘read aloud the personal ID number’) as well as those that indirectly recognized only technologically outdated solutions for video identification (like ‘agents need to take screenshots of the screen’). The Regulation clearly defines that liveness detection and ID document authenticity checks must be unequivocal to prevent the use of low-quality solutions and poor AI algorithms. 

Using Live Agents

Live agents can be incorporated into digital onboarding 24/7 to enhance identity verification on high-risk applicants seamlessly for the customer that don’t slow down the process. This allows companies to maintain the speed and convenience of digital onboarding while still being able to provide human assistance if needed. 

There are certain points within the digital onboarding process where live agents can be included, like the document verification process; if the AI system flags an ID document as potentially fraudulent or cannot definitively verify it, the case can be routed to an agent for manual review. If the system cannot match the user’s selfie and the photo on the ID document, an agent can review the images side-by-side and make a judgment call. Also, if user-entered data does not match or is inconsistent with system database checks, an agent can decide not to let the user complete the onboarding process. 

Agents provide human oversight without compromising speed or user experience. With intelligent implementation, users may not even realize there are agents involved.

Security

Adding live agents into the digital onboarding process does not compromise security or privacy. The agents only access the minimum amount of data needed to verify the originality of an ID document. The data flows directly between the customer and the onboarding system. Agents never actually handle documents or data; they view it briefly through their monitoring dashboard if needed. All connections are encrypted end-to-end. The onboarding system and agent tools utilize the latest security protocols and technologies to keep data secure, while regular audits validate that proper controls are in place.

Adding human oversight enhances security as they can notice suspicious behavior that automated systems may miss. Their expertise helps catch and prevent fraud. 

Overall, enhancing digital onboarding with human agents provides accountability and oversight to meet all regulatory requirements consistently. Their involvement demonstrates a company’s commitment to compliance, even while taking advantage of automated solutions. 

Interested how our live agents are incorporated into our digital onboarding solution – contact our sales at sales@identyum.com