The third day of SVIC’s Navigating Fintech Disruption program is dedicated to two themes which are today at the top of every financial institution’s agenda: cybersecurity and digital transformation. In this article we provide an overview of the day three schedule, which is designed to give financial services executives an insider’s perspective on areas such as digital identity management, regtech and corporate transformation. This is achieved through sessions with digital leaders like Jumio and IdentityMind Global coupled with a personal meeting with Intuit, a company that has undergone a significant digital transformation since its days as a legacy software developer. The day is rounded off by workshops led by SVIC on design thinking and corporate innovation, where program participants are challenged to apply new approaches to problem solving and put what they have learned into practice to the benefit of their own organization.
Digital identities
Any company that today offers products or services online will eventually come up against the question: do you know who you are doing business with? This query is even more critical in industries like banking and financial services given the sensitivity of the data in play and the need to satisfy a growing body of regulation on fighting money laundering and fraud.
Most financial organizations already have infrastructure in place to tackle these issues. But these legacy systems are starting to creak under the strain of keeping up with the fast pace of digital. As the level of sophistication of what we can do with our money online grows, so do the threats to security and the likelihood of fraud.
Helping enterprises meet these challenges are fintech companies like IdentityMind. During day three of the Navigating Fintech Disruption program we introduce executives to IdentityMind so that they can learn more about how established financial services firms can innovate in the areas of cybersecurity and fraud prevention.
At the heart of IdentityMind’s offering is digital identity verification delivered via a software-as-a-service platform which utilizes automation and machine learning. The platform draws upon a long list of resources including biometrics, social media and IP geolocation to verify the identity of a company’s customers or users. Not only does this give a company confidence in who they are dealing with, it eliminates the need for costly manual oversight and reduces errors.
“Existing solutions today, legacy-based systems, they result in high false positives which results in higher costs, more time, more effort spent on reviewing those alerts,” says Faisal Nisar, director of product at IdentityMind. “Legacy-based solutions do not work in today’s environment,”
The session at IdentityMind gives executives on the Navigating Fintech Disruption Program first-hand knowledge on the latest problems and solutions emerging today in cybersecurity.
Merging the online and offline worlds
The extent of the challenge when it comes to tackling fraud is well illustrated by a 2018 report on the subject from research advisory firm Javelin. According to the firm’s findings, 16.7 million Americans were victims of identity fraud in 2017, a record high. The majority of the illicit activity took place on the web, with fraudsters increasingly targeting online channels with ever-more complex and stealthy schemes.
Jumio is among the fintechs building the tools to combat this growing problem. Its AI-powered system uses ID scans, real-time selfies and document reading to determine if users are who they say they are. Use cases of Jumio’s platform include fraud detection, know-your-customer compliance and user onboarding.
During the third day of the Navigating Fintech Disruption program participants hear from Jumio on the state of fraud detection today and learn about the solutions offered by the company in the real-time identity verification space.
A marathon, not a sprint
When it comes to digitizing the operations of a bank or financial institution, being aware of the existence of tools like those offered by IdentityMind and Jumio is a good first step. But the real work begins when it comes to trying to integrate such innovative technologies into existing systems or use them to replace existing systems entirely.
On day three of Navigating Fintech Disruption we educate executives in how to approach this task through a meeting with Intuit. A company that specializes in financial, accounting and tax applications, Intuit was once a provider of desktop software. Today it is a mobile-first, cloud-based platform and service provider.
“It took intestinal fortitude. We had to reshape our portfolio, we divested businesses that we loved including the original product that started the company, Quicken, and we leaned into the cloud,” is how Intuit CEO Brad Smith describes the digital transformation journey the company has been on since 2010.
Navigating Fintech Disruption program participants have the chance to hear the insider’s perspective on the Intuit story. They study Intuit’s successes and missteps and are able to use those learnings to build a blueprint for their own organization’s digital transformation.
Putting theory into practice
Day three of Navigating Fintech Disruption executive immersion program joins digital transformation theory with practice. Through meetings with IdentityMind and Jumio, executives on the program see how emerging technologies like artificial intelligence are being deployed to build platforms which can ensure security and eliminate fraud. These two challenges are among the toughest facing the banking and finance industry and yet are essential to get right to ensure the smooth functioning of the digital finance ecosystem for consumers and businesses alike.
An in-person meeting with Intuit and workshops on design thinking and corporate innovation with SVIC seek to empower program participants to translate what they learn while in Silicon Valley into actionable steps for realizing digital transformation at their own organizations. These sessions ensure executives leave the program with concrete takeaways which they can apply immediately to advance innovation at home and keep pace with the fast-moving world of fintech.
Silicon Valley Innovation Center helps financial sector executives experience and connect with the Silicon Valley fintech startup ecosystem through a fintech executive immersion program. As Silicon Valley is a hotbed of fintech innovation, company executives will benefit greatly from visiting the innovation hub and interacting with startups like the ones mentioned in this article. Through this immersive experience, executives will also gain deep insights into how partnering with Silicon Valley startups can be a game-changer for their businesses.
