Identity verification – AML / KYC

A huge number of businesses that deal with individual people as clients, tenants, or employees are required to prove the identity of that person before their relationship can begin. For most service providers this is mandated by regulation or statute.

S4Encrypt deliver a solution to this requirement by integrating sophisticated identity verification (IDV) tools with the use of a secure digital vault for each individual person. The process starts with a prompt to the individual to take a photograph of their identity document – passport or driving licence – and their own face on a smartphone before performing facial recognition to ensure that they match.

As well as the basic biometrics, S4Encrypt can build a comprehensive picture of an individual’s background by performing real-time checks to verify address, date of birth, credit history, electoral registration and other information necessary for the onboarding of the person in question. This can be accompanied by documents that need to be presented at the point of verification, such as bank statements or utility bills, all of which can be uploaded to the vault.

Depending on the nature of the service to be provided, confidence thresholds can be set accordingly. A bank, for example, may require a different level of confidence in the identity data when taking on a new client as distinct from a landlord taking on board a tenant.

However, the element that differentiates the approach taken by S4Encrypt to identity verification is based on the use of the highly secure vault for each person, holding all of the data that results from the IDV process: photographs of the person and their documents, evidence of external checks having been carried out, geo-location data confirming where the individual was when the activity was performed, and confirmation that any necessary PEPs and sanctions checks have been done.

All the data that results from the IDV process is transferred into the individual’s highly secure vault by API and is held thereafter in fields that can be queried by the business applications used by the onboarding organisation. Data is transferred across highly configured TLS connections, and is encrypted as soon as it reaches their vault. The IDV tool captures the structured data in JSON and CSV files that can not only be used to populate fields in their vault, but are retained in the vault as files as a strong evidential record of the date and time of capture. All of the actions that relate to the information stored in each vault are recorded in an audit trail, with a comprehensive set of reporting tools. Granular permission controls protect the data, thus ensuring that any subsequent use of the information, whether by API or human access, is restricted according to the business rules in operation.

There is a wide range of different situations where strong identity data is required, with appropriate evidential records covering how it has been gathered and managed.

Please contact us if you would like to learn more about the approach that S4Encrypt takes to solving this problem.