Modern Identity Verification Beats KBA Every Time

Especially after the pandemic and with a significant increase in overall online interactions, the reliance on automated identity verification (IDV) has been a key component to facilitate successful customer journey engagements. IDV is the opportunity to confirm that your user is who they say they are, leveraging an ID, selfie, and a series of additional data points, specific to your industry. For example, your organization might rely on a non-expired Drivers License, SSNs, confirmation of a user’s age, or even a complete Anti-Money Laundering (AML) history to ultimately approve a user.

IDV solutions like Vouched ensure that you’re not only collecting the right information, but that you’re guaranteeing that information (through a series of Crosschecks) in a matter of seconds, so that your users can swiftly move forward to complete their transactions.

Fast and flexible IDV solutions allow your team to scale these security measures through all customer interactions, which ultimately boosts customer trust and confidence. If your users know that the proper IDV solutions have been integrated across the platform, they’ll know that the company prioritizes their safety and in turn will trust your organization with their personal information enabling long-term and secure relationships.

For example, let’s say that your user has created an account with your platform. To do that, they uploaded a picture of their ID and a selfie scan. From that quick check, your organization got all of the information they needed to confirm the account and move the user forward in their journey. Days later, that user is ready to make a purchase. Since they’ve already verified with your organization, now it’s just a matter of ensuring that the person making the transaction is the same person that originally created the account.

Companies like Vouched allow their clients to curate custom checkpoints for the various stages of their customer lifecycles. And in this example, you may not need the user to upload their ID or get a full check on the user. Instead, you should just require a selfie to ensure that the person is who they say they are/the owner of the account.

When determining the right solutions for your business, there is a lot of noise that can get in the way. One important thing to remember is:

For many organizations KBA can feel like a quick solution to manage risk when in reality, it’s often a false sense of security that won’t actually protect your customers from fraud and instead, will actually pose more threat to your business.

1. 1. KBA Does Not Verify A User. By setting up these questions, you’re only guaranteeing that the user can reset their password or sometimes login if they know these answers. You’re not actually verifying if the user is who they say they are. For example, anyone can use my name to create an account and set up questions that are relevant to them. But if they aren’t completing the full IDV process (ID +Selfie) then your business has not done their due diligence to ensure that the user is who they say they are.

 

1. 1. KBA Can Be Guessed KBA solutions hope that the user has answers that can be easily remembered but not guessed. However, most questions can be easily answered through a quick scan online. Questions like: “What Highschool Did You Go To” “Your Mother’s Maiden Name” or even “Your Pet’s Name” are easily found online.

 

1. 1. KBA Can’t Protect Users Who Know Their Info For many individuals, their information was targeted by someone that they knew. For example, in 2021, over 2 billion dollars were caught in family member fraud in the healthcare industry. That includes spouses, parents, children, or other family members. Those that work in the healthcare industry are at the highest risk for this type of fraud.

 

1. 1. KBA Data Is Regularly Exposed And Openly Sold On The Darkweb The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) no longer endorses security questions and answers as a secure authentication method due to exposure rates and the fact that most security teams have found that Fraudsters pass KBA better than genuine customers.

 

1. KBA Leads To Higher Abandonment Rates 20% of users forget the answers to their security questions within 6 months. This creates the need for re-authentication and user frustration. With the right help information, IDV will yield higher conversion rates for your business. Instead, customers that abandon the IDV process tend to be bad actors that were scared off by the need to upload their ID and photo.

Organizations have a lot on the line when it comes to protecting their customers. Managing the risks for your users by implementing a proper IDV solution is the only way to mitigate the cost of fraud for your company and build a long-term relationship with your customers that will keep your business thriving. Contact us now at sales@vouched.id to learn how you can implement our solution right away.

Resources: