The identity verification process for financial institutions just got easier thanks to two new digital identity tools FICO rolled out this month.
The credit bureau rolled out FICO Identity Proofing, which lets organizations verify customers’ identities through selfies with their government-issued IDs. FICO also rolled out User Authentication, which is a suite of capabilities that includes behavioral authentication. User Authentication lets financial institutions ensure existing digital accounts aren’t being accessed by unauthorized users.
TJ Horan, vice president of product management at FICO, told Bank Innovation advances in identity verification tools are becoming increasingly important as adoption of digital banking grows. “There’s a global trend in how to have a frictionless experience while being able to identify customers, onboard new customers, and also authenticate existing customers,” he explained. “We looked at this as a natural extension of our financial crime solutions platform.”
See also: How FICO is using AI to attack payments fraud
Both product launches were made possible after FICO acquired digital security and risk management software company EZMCOM in August. The Identity Proofing tool verifies individuals’ identities within seconds through an AI-based comparison between the individual’s identity document and a selfie. FICO’s AI algorithms determine if the photo of the identity document is legitimate. It also uses facial mapping to recognize features and match them with the selfie. The technology is able to verify an identity even if the individual has aged or changed their hairstyle since they last took their last photo.
For existing customers, the FICO Authentication Suite gives organizations access to layered authentication controls like multifactor, biometric and behavioral factors. The product uses keystroke analysis and to verify identities. For example, if a digital banking account is compromised through a fraudulent login, FICO’s authentication capabilities will notice that the login occurred on a new device, or if the account password and username were typed in an unusual way. FICO’s authentication product will then consider the risk of allowing the login and will follow up with an extra verification step if required.
Both products are available to most of FICO’s 9,000 international insititutional clients.
In recent months, FICO has been on a trajectory to grow its digital authentication and fraud prevention capabilities. In September, it rolled out Falcon X, a tool that enables data scientists at financial institutions to combine open-source machine learning capabilities with FICO’s machine-learning algorithms to detect criminal activity.
Horan highlighted that as the nature of banking changes, FICO intends to help institutions keep up with new security challenges.
“Consumers expect financial institutions to evolve and to offer new products and services,” he explained. “Institutions are looking to the cloud to help speed up their abilities to get defenses in place so that they can [continue to] offer new products and services to consumers.”






