For many European financial services companies, the battle to attract new customers is fierce. With new “challenger” banks emerging and smaller banks looking to capitalise on new technologies to provide a competitive advantage, every step of the customer acquisition process must be streamlined to achieve optimum success.

“At Signicat we commissioned a report, ‘The battle to on-board: The European perspective on digital on–boarding for retail banks’, to understand what consumers across Europe identify as problem areas when it comes to selecting new financial service providers,” said Gunnar Nordseth, CEO at Signicat. “We found that up 52% of European customers abandon the on–boarding process and one of the main reasons for this is the need to present paper-based ID documents. The research further found that 52% of respondents would be more inclined to register for a new service should the on–boarding process be 100% online.”

To compound this, new regulations throughout Europe are forcing institutions to more rigorously identify customers. In addition to AMLD5 and new KYC regulations, eIDAS opens the way for electronic identification and PSD2 places the focus on strong customer authentication. This multi-faceted focus on identity means that current on–boarding processes could become cumbersome and act as a deterrent to potential new customers.

The platform will enable financial institutions across Europe to verify identity documents though capture on a mobile device, and to seamlessly on-board customers.

Mitek’s Mobile Verify solution can verify the authenticity of identity documents by capturing an image with a mobile device and assessing its authenticity. This helps customers to ensure compliance with strict AML and KYC regulations.

“This partnership marks a watershed in the European identity market. Financial institutions can now on-board customers 100% digitally, doing away with the need to visit a branch,” René Hendrikse, VP and Managing Director, EMEA, Mitek commented. “With the arrival of PSD2 and increasingly stringent AML and KYC regulations, the ability to verify customers’ identity digitally is essential. Our partnership with Signicat offers one of the only platforms capable of this.” 

“Partnering with Mitek enables us to jointly offer European financial services institutions a customer on–boarding solution that is 100% online. Our customers will not only be able to  benefit from Mitek’s Mobile Verify solution, but also Signicat’s secure authentication, electronic signing and archiving of sealed documents, as well as our integration with over 30 public electronic ID schemes and registry lookups,” said Nordseth. “The partnership is designed to remove friction from the customer on–boarding process to ensure financial institutions can effectively compete in the marketplace.”

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