Protecting your business and your customers against identity fraud

By Tushar Parashar, Head - Strategic Accounts, Docusign

As digital adoption accelerates across Southeast Asia, so does the sophistication of fraudsters, who are finding ways to steal identities, create fake accounts, forge documents, and more. In fact, 69% of organisations agree that identity fraud attempts are on the rise. Protecting against all this can feel like an uphill battle, but it’s an important one to fight. 

Why is identity fraud protection so hard? 

It can be hard to stay one step ahead in the race against fraud. Larger organisations are often saddled with fragmented tools, processes, and systems. And every department might do things differently. In a financial services organisation, for example, one department might conduct Know Your Customer checks with prospective banking customers via email; while in another department, manual checks may still be the norm. This fragmentation can lead to mismanagement and exposure to risk.

Furthermore, with many organisations still relying on a lot of manual work to check customers’ identities, there’s no chance for real-time validation. A customer might submit their identity documents to a teller at a bank, and a back-office processing team would then have to manually verify those documents. There’s a gap between the front- and back-office, which not only leads to more time-consuming downstream work, but it further exposes the organisation to risk.  

But there are easy ways to overcome such challenges, particularly in markets where government-backed identity verification systems already exist. Think SingPass in Singapore, VIDA in Indonesia, or Aadhaar in India. Using SingPass as an example, almost all Singaporean citizens and visa holders already have a SingPass account, so it absolutely makes sense to leverage this pre-existing system to verify customers’ identities. And an easy way to do so (which I’ll explore further below) is via Docusign.

Why is it worth the effort? 

Protecting your business and your customers against fraud is critical in so many ways. As research from Docusign and Entrust found, 41% of organisations face annual direct identity fraud costs of over $1 million; while 15% also face indirect costs of over $1 million.

The direct costs can emerge when fraudsters gain access to customers’ accounts or an organisation’s services, which not only drains money from the business but can lead to huge fines and penalties. The indirect costs stem from things like reputational damage and the erosion of customer trust.  

Then there are all the downstream implications of sub-standard ID verification processes. If you’re still using manual methods to verify customers’ identity, then you’re draining internal resources as you scramble to check every customer’s ID documents. Worse, you’re not delivering on your customers’ expectations for a seamless, unified experience. If they have to download a PDF, fill it in, come back to your website and click on a buried link to submit the form… Well, that’s going to leave them feeling pretty uninspired. And we all know that a poor customer experience will drive your customers away in droves. 

Simplify ID verification for every user 

With near-universal mobile adoption across Asia, organisations have a great opportunity to make ID verification processes 100% digital. Automating every step of the process will transform the customer experience, while also ensuring the latest, most secure, and trusted tools for ID verification are in play.  

Question is, what tool should you use? Docusign Identify, which is built into the Docusign IAM platform, is one of the most trusted ID verification tools in the market today. It’s incredibly easy for customers to use their passport, driver’s licence, or local ID to prove their identity via Docusign IAM. And, because we’re already integrated into government-backed verification systems like SingPass, it means that you can use the infrastructure that local customers are already familiar with to do your identity checks. It all helps build trust, while also ensuring a great customer experience.

For markets that don’t yet have national digital identity systems, the open nature of the Docusign platform makes it easy to add your existing physical IDs to our ID verification process. For example, in Vietnam, you could add signer-held tokens for seamless KYC verifications.

Essentially, no matter where your business is located in Asia, the bottom line is that fast, mobile-first, user-friendly ID verification flows are now a must-have — to both delight your customers and help protect your business against fraud.