Giving Your Users the Keys–Financial Services and Access Management
COVID-19 has transformed all parts of life. The way we do business, our purchasing preferences, and our personal aspirations and life goals have changed dramatically. For me, I now work from home, I order EVERYTHING online, and we decided to accelerate our family plans of moving to the mountains and building a multi-generational home for our parents to live nearby when they retire. Now I know what you’re thinking, “Moving to an isolated place, next to your in-laws? No thank you!”
The deciding factor for me was determining the right level of access my in-laws had to our place at any given time. Being able to decide and enforce easy, yet “secure,” access was key. My in-laws have their own entrance, with their own key. When they want to come to our house, just one minute away, they have to use a separate key, which helps us maintain the right level of privacy for each of our families.
In many ways, this concept applies to financial institutions as well. The pandemic has accelerated change in all forms of business and personal transactions. Purchasing preferences, client interactions, and business processes with partners have all changed. However, having the right identity solution in place ensures that you can provide seamless access and authorization at the right level for each of your users.
Here are some examples:
Access and onboarding for new banking customers
As new fintech business models emerge, the newer generation of consumers are willing to trade a nearby bank branch for a better customer experience. Having easy, secure access to banking services is critical. In order to provide this, financial institutions need to provide seamless Authentication with ways for customers to create their own account, virtually. Financial institutions need to look at solutions that can identity proof the user and their device before they are issued a credential. This is as simple as registering your device, and then taking a selfie of yourself, submitting a picture of your ID, and confirming your new account with an out-of-band push notification to your mobile device.
Engaging with business partners
Partnering with the right vendors can truly differentiate your service offerings to your customers. That’s why it's so important to provide easy ways to engage with your business partners—so that they ultimately want to continue to conduct business with you. Financial institutions should look at social login, also known as social sign-in or social sign-on, which uses information from social networking sites to facilitate logins on third-party applications and platforms. The process is designed to simplify sign-in and registration experiences, providing a convenient alternative to mandatory account creation. This can be an attractive feature that can help streamline user verification, while also providing more reliable access to user data for personalization. LinkedIn Login is a great social login that can be used for business partners, as it lets users sign in with their professional identity. Users can’t control permissions of what the app can access, but LinkedIn has perhaps the strictest approval process for information requests. Third-party site owners and developers must have prior approval to request any user information beyond basic profile data, location, and employment status.
Easy access for clients
When providing asset wealth management services to your clients, you want to make sure the experience is frictionless yet secure. And you need to find the right balance to ensure a great customer experience. In this instance, biometrics paired with Adaptive Multi-Factor Authentication may be your best bet. Verifying your identity via your thumbprint or face is quicker and easier than having to type in a PIN or remember and correctly enter a password. Fingerprint and facial scans are widely used in everyday consumer devices, especially for unlocking devices and verifying small purchases. Consumers want interactions to be frictionless, and biometrics is the lowest friction security factor to date. As exciting and secure as biometrics may sound, don’t rely on them as a single source of truth. Biometric information is often publicly available: people leave fingerprints everywhere they go, our faces are frequently captured on CCTV, and biometric systems have been proven to be hackable. With access to this information, hackers could clone or fake biometric traits. Therefore, the answer to the question of “Which authentication is the most secure?” is, and always has been, “Multiple authentication factors.” Combining the use of biometric verification with step-up authentication only when a risky transaction has been flagged is the most secure option for protecting enterprise systems.
When it comes to user access, financial institutions need to evaluate the type of user, paired with their expectations for experiences, as well as ensuring they protect their bank and customer data. Tailoring those experiences enables your business to differentiate your services—giving you happy customers and partners.
Interested in learning more? Check out our Financial Services page!
