Category: fintechs

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Prevent Identity Theft by Implementing Digital KYC

Identity theft happens when someone steals your personal information like Aadhar card number, PAN details, or credit card information to make an online purchase, access your financial accounts, create a new bank account, or commit any other type of fraud.

Identity thefts are far more common than you think. According to Norton Cyber Security Insights 2021, nearly 2.7 crore Indians were affected by identity threats in 2020 – that is, 45% of adult Indian internet users. With such high levels of risk, financial institutions need to re-evaluate their current KYC processes to reduce instances of fraud while engaging with new customers. As instances of fraud will see an upward trend, it is time for financial institutions to opt for secure Digital KYC processes in place of legacy practices.

Before we understand how to reduce risk, let us know how one becomes vulnerable to identity theft.

  • Unsecure and public browsing: For the most part, accessing the internet is safe. But, unsecured websites and public Wi-fi increase the risk of data, landing into hackers’ hands.
  • Data breach: A data breach is a security incident where sensitive information is accessed without authorisation. This year, personally identifiable information of 5,00,000 Indian police personnel was hacked into and put up for sale online, which was traced to a police exam conducted in December 2019.
  • Malware activity: Malwares are malicious programs that perform several functions like stealing, altering code, hijacking, deleting sensitive data, and encrypting.
  • Phishing: In this type of attack, a fraudulent communication appears to come from a reputable source, which, when clicked on, lands data in identity thieves’ hands.
  • Physical theft: Sometimes, losing a credit card or mobile phones makes data available at ease, to thieves.
  • Card skimming: In credit card skimming, thieves use a small device to steal payment card (credit card, debit card or ATM card) information. When the card is swiped through this device, it captures all the data from the card’s magnetic strip.

Digital KYC to Address Identity Theft

KYC (‘Know Your Customer’ or ‘Know Your Client’) is a process by which institutions verify the identities of their customers to gauge their identity and credibility. Banks, insurance companies and financial institutions heavily rely on KYC before opening a new account.

Identity verification with KYC mainly addresses identity theft. Despite RBI guidelines for KYC, forged documents and financial fraud continue to be a problem. Recently, in Delhi, a group of fraudsters cheated several popular banks and utilised 22 PAN cards, 9 Aadhar cards, and 21 voter ID cards for their operation.

The current KYC processes are heavily dependent on outsourced vendors and are susceptible to both customer and employee fraud. Kwik.ID provides both Digital and Video based KYC identification to address the issues that KYC processes currently face. Our Video KYC process is used for customer identification as mandated by RBI, SEBI, IRDAI, and PFRDA. The process uses end-to-end encryption for maximum data security and prevents your risk of breach or theft with an on-premises setup.

We verify all officially valid documents (OVD) like PAN, Aadhar, Driver’s License, and Voter ID card from the Central Government Database using our Digital KYC offering. Using Optical Character Recognition, our software recognises characters in ID documents within seconds. Besides incorporating security questions to verify details, AI-enabled image processing is an integral part of our Digital KYC process.

We establish identity consistency by comparing user images on selfies, institutional photographs, and photograph on official ID. We also detect liveliness using AI with live-action commands. Both these steps together significantly minimise instances of fraudulent customers.

Get in touch with us to know more about our streamlined Digital and Video kyc process – we can customise a solution based on your requirement.

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Stay Connected With Video

We’d begin to tell you about how the tech-driven world has taken on the traditional one, but you already know it. Now, in a socially distant world, not only have businesses taken to tech, but they are making the switch from audio to video to add the in-person feel. From digital loan disbursal to onboarding customers with the best Video KYC tools and updated Video KYC techniques within minutes, everything now happens over video, which clearly means that video channels and video conferencing tools are soon going to be the new norm in organisations. To aid seamless conversations between you and your customers, plugging in an optimal video infrastructure is the need of the hour, because here’s all that a good video conferencing tool has to offer.

  • Free Product Demo: Let’s face it, no matter how much you interact over video with a potential customer, at the end of the day it is your product that’s doing the talking. Fortunately, with video conferencing you can showcase your product too. With the media sharing option, you can choose to share a product demo video right there, right then, with the customer. Or better still, show the functionality of the product, LIVE, so you could even resolve whatever doubts your customer may have about the product.
  • Service call: Selling your product isn’t all you need to do. As a trustworthy brand, you’re expected to provide after-sales services to your customers. With a video service call, you can follow up with customers and ask them for product feedback that helps your brand improve. In case a customer is facing an issue with the product they may also request a service call and the agent can resolve the problem in real-time over video.
  • Context aware content delivery: Helping your customer is great, but showing that you understand their interests and cater to their needs is even better. Using real-time data and analytics you can gather information about your potential customer, right from their previous interaction with your company, their interests, to their location. These insights help you understand and deal better with your customers.
  • CRM Integration: Your CRM isn’t only essential for communicating with customers, but it should also create alignment and streamline communication within your company. Everything from your calendar and emails to your social media platforms and data collection tools can be integrated to ensure that your organisation does quick business with a seamless process.
  • Intelligent routing: Customer service calls are queued based on the product, customer priority, language, location and more to provide an optimal user experience. For instance, if you study the location and spot someone in a weaker network area, you can answer their call sooner before they lose connectivity completely. This feature also shares a wait time with the customer, so that waiting endlessly doesn’t hamper their productivity.
  • Screen sharing: When you’re working as a team you maybe full of ideas that you want to share but can’t verbally explain. The great thing about video conferencing is its screen sharing feature and interactive whiteboard options that not only allow you to share your idea, but let team members brainstorm together as well, while allowing for quick decision making. This feature makes collaborations easy in the socially distant digital age.
  • Chat option: In the event that there is a technical glitch or a language barrier between the agent and potential customer, the chat feature makes it easier for them to interact quickly while being face-to-face as well. Many customers may shy away from asking questions directly but maybe more comfortable using the chat option.
  • In-person interaction: The entire point of a video conferencing tool is to feel like you’re dealing in the offline world even when online, and video aids in doing just that. Regardless of distance, you can enjoy a seamless, productive meeting or collaboration, as you did in your own office space.

Bottom line is, if you’re looking at pushing the envelope for your business and speeding it up, video is a tool that’s here to stay and you should definitely consider investing in it when the time is right.

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Insights into the Future of Digital Business

The pandemic has irreversibly changed the way we work. “Phygital” seems to be the current scenario and digital the future. Many businesses, however, had already shifted from offline to online processes long before the pandemic while the last six months have witnessed only online transactions and dealings.

Organisations have also revised their business priorities as they strive to find new solutions to accelerate the business pace and find long-term success. Traditional face-to-face methods have been replaced by tools like online wallets, e-commerce business, Video KYC for banks and insurance firms, AI-led instructions and more.

Organisations will soon start building their digital platforms while utilising advanced analytics with greater intensity. For example, DBS Bank understood the need to do more for its customers and adopted a RED mantra: Respectful, Easy to deal with, and Dependable. This involved tech-driven processes because they strongly believe that making banking joyful should involve making the ‘banking’ part, invisible.

Here’s how the country is paving the path for digital business growth.

Digitising Sales and Customer Processes

Businesses have begun to consider digital tools and processes, especially for selling a product and meeting customer process requirements. Companies are adopting and implementing a host of applications, digital payment methods, self-service platforms, digital documentation, onboarding and electronic signatures to ensure that internal operations, income and revenue continue to flow. Even the smallest of businesses have taken to digital to keep the customer inflow intact, by adopting the latest AI technology and tools like face recognition and biometric signatures, and they don’t seem to be going back to their traditional ways anytime soon.

The finance industry, including banks, NBFCs, fintech, insurance and many others now choose online processes to make business easier for customers, including opening an account through video KYC. Customers no longer need to visit the branch to complete all the formalities and fill out extensive forms. Video KYC speeds up the process ensuring they are onboarded in just two minutes!

Digital Marketing to Customers

The way companies market their products is also evolving rapidly. Given that industry gatherings have shut down, B2B companies like Slack and Zendesk have adopted new ways to engage customers via their digital video advertising strategy and generated new business leads. Digital content, especially ads directed via social media platforms need to be data-driven, personalised and displayed to the right customers for a continued boost of sales and marketing. This can also help improve efficiency and ROI.

Empowering Employees with the Right Tools

To ensure that employees reach their maximum potential in these times, it is imperative for companies to adopt technology that makes operations and processes easier and more efficient. Employees need to be educated about the latest technologies and trained on how to deal with new clientele, digitally, for maximum customer satisfaction.

For example, Kwik.ID, our Video KYC tool is enabled with customer queueing facility to reduce customer repetition. The analytics dashboard helps agents manage their time more efficiently. Finally, the Neuro Linguistic Programming software ensures agents understand and guide customers better, and (instantly) resolve their issues.

Using the Cloud for storage of enterprise applications, planning and management, workforce management, billing and many others, not only provides easier employee access to technology but also helps manage cybersecurity better as everything is housed together. It is also important for organisations to have all the documentation and customer data in one place—no matter where the agent or employee is, data can always be accessed remotely and work needn’t stop. At Think Analytics, we recommend working on-the-go, which our video KYC tool enables, by storing all the data in one place.

In the coming months, online tools like digital banking, e-wallets and video KYC can significantly benefit investors, insurance companies and agents, banked and unbanked sectors, non-banking entities and many others. While these tools boost business, they also help battle slow-moving business owing to the COVID crisis while ensuring that work continues seamlessly from anywhere across the globe.

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A Look at How AI is Transforming the Insurance Sector

With IRDAI introducing Video KYC for insurance companies, the sector gets much relief to operate swiftly, as people turn to digital businesses and onboarding. Of course, with the introduction of this new digital tool comes the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Insurance space, which the industry is slowly but surely adapting to.

AI makes life simpler not only for the parent companies, but for insurance agents as well, who can now get detailed insights into customer interests, understand their insurance needs better, and onboard them in a jiffy, and do all of this, online. With the introduction of Video based KYC in insurance, we at Kwik.ID have noticed an instant willingness to adopt AI, among customers, agents, and companies. Here are some reasons that explain its growth trajectory.

The digital age welcomes the power of AI seeping into insurance

AI and the Insurance Sector

AI technologies aren’t a new term for businesses and are widely used across operations and applications including data analytics, automation, and natural language processing which helps understand the customer better. With AI, agents are assured of better insights regarding customers which thereby culminate into better customer service. Apart from that, AI eliminates the risk of fraud, encourages better productivity and even helps market and up-sell insurance products better. It is believed that by the next decade, AI will reshape the insurance sector with insights regarding a client’s idiosyncratic risks.

Customer Service

AI-powered chatbots add value to your business by providing top-notch support and services. They work without human intervention and also answer complex queries while supporting NeuroLinguistic Programming, which interprets and analyses the customer’s verbal statements and provides an accurate answer. These AI bots can be integrated not only into your website, but across social platforms and other digital interaction tools, so as to streamline your customer data and interactions with them. This helps the company achieve better customer engagement and productivity.

Fraud Detection and Prevention

Fraud detection is a knowledge-intensive activity which is applied across industries like banking and insurance. AI analyses historical data and identifies a set of patterns using Big Data and IoT (Internet of Things) to unlock hidden insights. Moreover, it supports e-signatures, and face detections so as to prevent any kind of fraud. At Kwik.ID, our cutting-edge Video KYC tools are integrated with AI-powered Liveliness and Face Recognition which ensures that the customer being dealt with is real and genuine.

KYC Process

Various regulators and industries have begun noticing the potential of V-KYC for a superior customer driven process that helps onboard them in minutes. IRDAI recently released a circular that permits Video KYC for insurance companies as well as for agents, which benefits everyone, including policy buyers, who can now buy with ease. The compliance process has been made simpler, physical contact has been minimised and business continues to move faster than ever before, owing to a quick video KYC process. It takes barely two minutes to onboard a customer now with our video KYC tools, so we can certainly vouch for it being a swift process.

Claims Management

AI technologies make information systems more adaptive and improve the interaction between humans and computer systems. Bots can review claims, verify policy details, check for fraud, and process payments, making the process much faster and efficient. Underwriters have a more accurate risk assessment, and applications are processed in just a fraction of time.

Insurance executives believe that AI will significantly transform the industry in the near future by enhancing the customer experience with automated personalized services. As customers embrace the digital age and AI adoption gains momentum across industries, insurance companies have begun to show signs of stepping up and transforming their processes with cutting edge technologies like AI.

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Video-KYC sees a huge leap in 6 months, start-up Kwik.ID reports a jump of 1,00,000 sessions completed since February

With the regtech market evolving to facilitate compliance management while minimising regulatory risks, Video KYC solution Kwik.ID expects 3x growth in monthly sessions by March 2021

13 October, National: India’s fastest AI-enabled Video KYC solution providers, Kwik.ID has announced that they have crossed over 1, 00,000 successful Video KYC sessions since February 2020, with an 80%+ 5* user rating, and an overall NPS score of 90. Since the pandemic has shattered in-person customer identification to a large extent over various sectors of customer onboarding, Kwik.ID has made speedy headway in its growth trajectory. 

The regtech start-up witnessed a significant surge in its Video KYC session volumes, with an 85% + completion rate, significantly higher than industry averages, promising each session to be completed in under 2 minutes. In a market full of incumbents, albeit a late entrant, Kwik.ID already works with clients across multiple verticals – Fintech, NBFCs, Banks, Insurance, Lenders, Forex,  and the list goes on. 

MonishSalot, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officerof KwikID said, “Design and technical excellence, and superior performance has led us to reach such a wide audience in a short duration. Our product is naturally scalable to 100x of the current volumes. We always strive to do better than before and aim to fulfil the needs of today’s businesses and audience by staying relevant to them.”

The platform is expecting a 300%+ growth in daily sessions from November, as most institutions have shifted their customer onboarding tracks online for a seamless, accurate and remote process, and as the businesses open up. 

Adding to Monish’s viewpoint, Abhishek Joshi, Co-founder and Product Manager of KwiK.ID further added, “The pandemic has taken a toll on every aspect of our life and we need to come up with digital solutions to keep going. Kwik.ID Platform will continue to simplify the otherwise tedious process of safe and compliant customer onboarding and customer engagement. In today’s time, every time you get a face to face interaction with a customer, you have to make it count. It is not just about KYC. It’s about a memorable experience as well. ”

Various regulators and industry bodies have started seeing the potential of Video driven customeronboarding and KYC processes. This was only after the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDAI), Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) has permitted Video based customer identification process for NPS account opening. As per Frost & Sullivan research, the global regtech market is expected to reach $6.45 billion by 2020.  

~Press Release Ends~

About Kwik.ID:

Kwik.ID, an incubated start-up by Think Analytics is a lightweight plug-and-play Digital and Video KYC solution which is 100% compliant and allows to complete Video-based KYC Identification process within 2 minutes. Kwik.ID is a cross-platform presence-less KYC solution covering Video KYC, government database integration across all major OVDs, image recognition, liveliness detection, asynchronous agent handling, concurrent audit, and much more.  It was one of the first products with RBI’s V-CIP guidelines that came in January; the product really turns customer onboarding into a very seamless process, especially in the current COVID context where meeting customers in person is a limited option. For more information, visit: https://getkwikid.com/

Think Analytics India is an analytics solution and services company founded in 2014.  The team has built multiple solutions and is continuing to invest in products with a potential of disrupting the mobile data and analytics ecosystem. The organization has actively worked with some industry giants like ICICI Bank, Aditya Birla Finance, IDFC First Bank, SREI Equipment Finance, Navi Technologies, Ola Financial, Future Group among others and have affiliations with the likes of EY, Bain and Company, PwC, IAMAI.

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Kwik.ID Aspires to Maximise Agent Productivity

At Kwik.ID, instant customer onboarding via Video KYC and a high completion rate has always been at the heart of the company, but none of this is possible without exemplary customer service, achieved only by maximising agent productivity. From about 90,000 5 star sessions and 1,00,000 completed sessions since February, we are always striving to be the best video KYC solution providers in the industry.

Our array of features includes call queueing, call scheduling, estimating call times and more, to ensure you achieve an 85% completion rate and 100% customer satisfaction. To onboard customers seamlessly, it is imperative for our agents to monitor these queues and schedules for the best results. Here’s what goes into maximising their output and minimising your call time. 

Call scheduling by agents

In case the agent initiates the onboarding journey with a customer, he can schedule the call based on customer availability, to ease the process and maximise productivity, while ensuring there is no back and forth.

Link sharing made easy

In an agent-initiated Video KYC journey, the customer is sent a link to join the call. In the event that the link does not reach the customer via SMS, the agent can use any other social messaging platform integrated with our website, including email, WhatsApp or any other that the customer is comfortable with. This minimises the back and forth of requesting the link, as the agent can confirm immediately whether the customer has received it or not.

Low network bandwidth

AI plays an integral role in our digital KYC tool, be it for face recognition, liveliness, or OCR. We also integrate our AI feature to predict whether a call will be completed or not, taking into account factors like low bandwidth, customer location and more. If at any point the system detects that the call might not be completed, the agent isn’t patched in and the system requests the customer to schedule a call to enjoy a seamless process without any call drops.

Call scheduling by customers

Customers can match their availability with the agents and schedule a call to minimise the wait time at both ends. When booking a call, various dates and time slots are made available on the customer’s screen for easy access and instant scheduling.

Priority queueing

In the event that a potential customer has tried connecting previously but has dropped the call for a reason, or in case an agent fails to accept the assigned Video KYC call request or declines it within the threshold time, the customer is instantly added to the priority queue, which means he needn’t wait with another applicant again. The priority queue is also beneficial to customers in rural areas or those in areas with poor connectivity, to ensure their calls are prioritised and they don’t miss out on being onboarded soon. The priority queue is always checked before the standard queue. An active list of customers in the priority queue helps agents to align their time and schedule.

All of these options made available to both agents and customers, make the onboarding process much simpler. In addition, agents have access to live dashboards to quickly monitor customer data and statistics, as well as their own performance, so that they can keep striving for more.

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Advanced Chat Solutions for Customer Growth

The pandemic has changed how businesses communicate with their customers in order to thrive. While face-to-face business takes a backseat and online engagement becomes the new trend, companies and customers, both take to the chat box as a support channel to communicate and boost professional growth.

In fact, at Kwik.ID, we too believe that a major part of our 85% completion rate success is credited to our own chat feature which we offer during the Video KYC process. Instant interaction with the agent via chat support, makes it quick, efficient, and convenient to onboard clients instantly without any hassle. As digital business picks pace, the chat feature seems to get better with time, enhancing its functionality and being integrated for complete support.

Not only does a good chat feature boost agent productivity and enhance customer experience but as chat features and chatbots get more advances, here’s why they are much talked about in the digital space:

AGENT BENEFITS –

Boosts productivity: When on a phone call, an agent needs to focus only on one call at a time, which may even get prolonged. With a dashboard, agents can analyse the call duration and the wait time, so as to prioritise chat sessions and upcoming calls, better.

Boosts customer engagement: If your chat option is worth it, you’ll naturally see customer growth because most people today, prefer using a chat option rather than working over emails and calls. Instead of a potential customer skipping your product midway, they now have an option to reach out to you and know more about your product, instantly, thereby leading to more interactions and queries. This also helps to gauge which potential buyers are genuinely interested in your product. You could also personalise the chat to give it a friendly touch.

Reduces customer repetition: In fast-paced business, customers have no time to repeat their personal details or share their queries over and over again. Modern business calls for modern methods like reviewing all customer details, while they share their enquiries on chat. Saving a chat will also allow both, customer and agent, to read through previous chats and resolve queries faster.

Streamlined feedback: A traditional onboarding would end with a phone call. Today, the chatbot type feature enables you to do a lot more. After ending a customer call, you can set up an auto-emailer, asking the customer for feedback. This would help put together more accurate feedback and improve your product offerings, if needed.

CUSTOMER BENEFITS –

Customer onboarding and acquisition made easy: Live interaction makes onboarding a breeze, when potential customers can’t get around the process soon enough and need added assistance. Often, customers from rural areas or those not familiar with the language may need added support, which they can access via the chat option, so the onboarding process is made easier. Kwik.ID’s multilingual chat functionality during VideoKYC provides ease of communication to the customers with the agent where language becomes a barrier.

Ease of access: Unprecedented call volumes may lead to disappointed customers who’ve waited long enough with their calls going unanswered. With a chatbot, an estimated wait time provided to potential customers keeps them informed about when they can expect an agent on chat, so they can manage their time better, as well.

Only adopting a digital KYC tool isn’t enough. What matters is adding a tool which is enabled with plenty of features to ensure that business keeps moving, even on the go. A chat channel helps build a loyal customer base that relies on you and enables quick communication, which is just what your business needs, today.

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Financial Inclusion and the Potential of Video KYC

Financial-Inclusion-and-the-Potential-of-Video-KYC

Financial inclusion has always been at the heart of India’s economic policy and with the introduction of Video KYC across sectors, we have come one step closer to achieving this very feat. Video-based remote KYC has paved the way for underbanked and unbanked areas in an attempt to provide equal financial access to all. Financial inclusion makes it easy for SMEs, millennials, professionals, entrepreneurs and others to apply for and receive loans, credit cards, and buy insurance policies, now more than ever, with easy Video KYC verification and completion of tedious procedures in minutes. 

Video KYC is especially key to tier 2 and tier 3 cities where bank branches are far and few, but essential banking services remain more imperative. Kwik.ID is designed to ensure that our Video KYC tool reaches even the farthest of rural areas with provisions for a low bandwidth mode and a guided step-by-step processes; all of which we believe bridge the gap between customers and businesses, all across India.

Since its launch, the potential of Video KYC has been immense, and with the lockdown, the market for Video KYC vendors continues to flourish. So far, people stuck indoors resorted to online payments via different avenues, but what about those who didn’t have a bank account? Going physically to the bank and submitting documents was risky because it involved close contact. Luckily for us, just prior to the lockdown, Video based KYC was introduced and adopted by different sectors for opening bank accounts, demat accounts, Forex, online wallets and more, which made business much smoother for many.

In the most recent circular issued by the IRDAI, the regulatory board also permits Video KYC for insurance companies, which proves to be a game-changing move for the sector that for so long, suffered from the lack of customers during the lockdown.

With the introduction of Video KYC for Banks and Aadhar-based KYC, lenders now have access to customer data, with their consent. As per RBI guidelines, banks need to update the KYC details periodically to maintain a record of their account holders. In addition to Video KYC processes carried out while opening an account, account holders are requested to go through a re-KYC and submit the necessary documents, albeit online.

Video KYC proves to be a boon for fin-tech companies too, because owing to the limited manual KYC centers, very few customers thought of tech finance as a viable option, as the process wasn’t streamlined online. There was a 40% drop in manual KYC as compared to digital KYC. Being entirely online, features like OCR, Facematch, Liveliness detection, Geo-tagging are of great use to fintech companies, especially start-ups who want to minimize cost. These features validate the evidence and also rectify inconsistent data, thereby eliminating discrepancies and saving time.

Slowly and steadily, Video KYC has seeped into every sector and every industry, be it finance or otherwise. Digital KYC hasn’t just digitized the process, but accelerated it, as well. The entire process from application to disbursal that would once take up to 10 days, now takes barely a few hours.

India’s powerful digital ecosystem coupled with the potential Video KYC can unleash, are key to the country’s economic progress by driving financial inclusion.