More
than 300,000 Kiwis have had their identities stolen in the past year, with
just under half suffering financial loss. (2)
And
while consumer campaigns have raised awareness of scams and steps consumers should
take to safeguard personal information, businesses continue to be dogged by fraud.
NZ
Post’s RealMe® Business Development Manager, David
Roberts, said while most businesses collected
and checked identity information supplied by customers, it wasn’t enough to
close the door on fraudsters.
“Collecting
customer identity information validates the existence of an identity, but it
fails to link the identity to the person claiming to be its owner. So, for example, someone can use stolen documents to
create a false identity to use for illegal gains,” he said.
RealMe’s
AML-compliant online identity verification service solves the problem, without burdening
people with extra paperwork and form filling.
Jointly
developed by New Zealand Post and the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), RealMe®
provides significantly increased assurance that the person is who they are
claiming to be, thanks to a secure
technology layer that verifies customer identities from the original
authoritative source.
Together
with government agencies and private sector organisations, including ANZ, BNZ,
Kiwi-coin, OM Financial, Secured Signing and StudyLink, RealMe user accounts are
growing by over 10,000 a month. Based on current trends, Roberts expects
500,000 customers to be using RealMe by mid-2018.
He said potential changes to anti-money laundering legislation in 2018 were likely to accelerate adoption of identity verification, particularly in financial and legal services,
and
property and real estate – sectors still heavily reliant on paper-based
processes to verify the signatures on agreements and documents.
“Businesses
in these sectors are ripe for online services that digitise paperwork and workflow,
paving the way for robust identity verification,” he said.
The
technology offered additional spinoffs, with academic research on psychology
and behavioural economics showing a correlation between the introduction of
verification systems and more honest behaviour, said Roberts.
“We’re
suggesting that someone who asserts their identity with RealMe is more likely
to make honest statements – and therefore less likely to lodge a fraudulent
claim,” he said. “No small deal when you consider global figures that show one
in 10 new insurance accounts as fraudulent." (3)
Contact:
David Roberts
RealMe Business Development Manager
Mobile 027 886 0880