Diligent News
Increasing Online Fraud
Recent figures released by APACS (UK payment association) show that card losses for 2008 have risen by 14% overall, the particularly alarming statistic is that online banking fraud has increased by 132%. It has to be highlighted that the dramatic increase is combined with an exponential annual growth in online banking, the increase in non-present card holder transactions is on the rise owing to the convenience for consumers, unfortunately the risks involved with online banking are rising inline with the increased online banking usage.
Global AML/KYC and ID verification specialists Diligent Compliance are raising awareness of this increased risk to consumers. We recognise the importance for financial institutions to independently verify the identity of their online banking customers, this process can prove to be very expensive and restrictive owing to the difficulty in gaining access to global identification documents.
With globalisation and the ease of movement across the world, it's now the norm for local, national, and global financial institutions to have customers from multiple geographical regions. Increased commercial opportunties across a more diverse demographic proves to be a double-edged sword for financial institutions, yes they have a new customer, but they now have the problem of confirming the identities of their new global customers.
It's not widely known, but for a fraudster to commit an identity fraud all they require is basic information such as: full name, full address and DOB, this means that a financial institution requires access to a global ID verification that has flexible threshold settings to increase the security of their online transactions. Financial institutions are the first line of defence in combatting online identity fraud, this obviously has to be combined by customers taking responsibility with their cards and who they give out their details to, and why.
Card fraud provides both the issuer and the customer with the protracted headache of remedying financial loss and the theft of confidential information, the legacy issues for the customer can be far reaching when trying to gain bank and credit accounts in the future. Although the initial issue can be resolved, the ID fraudster can gain access to multiple lines of credit, thus leaving a trail of bad financial credit scoring problems for the original account holder.
Diligent Compliance provides global financial institutions with access to global AML/KYC and ID verification systems to mitigate identity theft and losses to their business and customers. Our market leading ID verification system provides access to over 140+ countries of official identity documents, the type of official documents used to confirm an individual's identity are: driving licenses, electoral roll, passports, travel documents and many more.
Globalisation and ID verification
On October 16th 2009 the second reading of the proposed "Online Purchasing of Goods and Services (Age Verification) Bill" has its second reading in the House of Commons. Baroness Massey (Lab) has championed the push for this new Bill to protect children from gaining access to age-restricted goods. The Age Verification Bill is calling for online retaliers who sell age-restricted goods to implement a system that enables them to verify the age of the customer purchasing their products inline with legal minimum age requirements.
The Age Verification Bill will remove any ambiguity and place the legal burden upon retailers to confirm their customers age before age-restricted goods are sold. The implications for online suppliers are far reaching, from a budgetary and operational perspective they will have additional burden placed upon their resources. Retailers of the following products will be seriously affected by the proposed Bill: Alcohol, knives, tobacco, video games, DVDs, solvents and spray paints.
The precursor to the Age Verification Bill was the Gambling Act 2005, this new Act placed a legal requirement upon gambling operators to verify the age of their customers, no longer is the "tick box" confirmation approach enough to verify is their customer is over 18.
Diligent Compliance Director, William Brown commented:
"The Age Verification Bill has been backed by multiple members of the House of Lords and House of Commons alike, the proposed Bill is an emotive subject as its primary focus is to protect children from being emotionally or physically harmed. Online shopping has increased exponentially in recent years, opening up multiple markets for retailers. In real terms, e-based shopping is still in its infancy, thus providing retailers and law with new challenges to ensure customers of age-restricted goods are at least the minimum age required."
"Diligent Compliance understands the difficulties for retailers to verify the age of their online customers, especially with the diversity of their consumer nationalities across a broad demographic. Responsible retailers obviously would not intentionally sell their age-restricted goods to minors, we acknowledge the difficulties for retailers in finding technology with broad enough geographical coverage of official government IDs to confirm the age of their customers. The new proposed Bill could result in retailers of age-restricted goods losing business because of the restrictions on the age verification systems available."
At Diligent Compliance we are raising the bar with our global age verification systems, our Diligent age verification system covers over 140+ countries, and provides real time online access to official government ID sources. Diligent age verification is an easy to implement online technology, it provides access to bespoke threshold settings and an easy pass or fail rating as standard.
More information
Contact Diligent Compliance to register or for more information on the official sources used, global coverage and pricing of our screening AML/KYC solutions and ID verification systems.
