Smart decisions are built on relevant, up-to-date, and accurate information. Anything less could lead to adverse outcomes. In the business world, one bad operational decision may very well snowball into a major problem that will hurt your brand, whether by smearing its reputation or compromising its bottom line—or even both. In fact, Gartner once revealed that a single bad operational financial decision can cost a firm as much as 3% of its profits, amounting to a staggering USD $3 million loss for a firm making USD $100 million.
Financial institutions, in particular, need to avoid making these costly decisions, particularly when it comes to managing risks, be it credit, operational or market risks. Because of these risks, the Corporate Finance Institute encourages financial firms—banks, in particular—to strive for prudent management and decision-making, as overexposure to risk can ultimately lead to failure, or at least compromise the institution to the point where many will be affected adversely.
This is where digital identity insights play a vital role. Digital identity insights are data-driven insights that help organisations understand and manage the identity-related risks they face in the new digital reality. These can help organisations make more informed risk decisions by providing a holistic view of the identity landscape, including the validity, linkage and behaviours of not only customers but also employees, partners and other relevant stakeholders. Armed with digital identity insights, businesses can make more informed risk decisions and mitigate identity-related risks effectively.
Digital identity insights can, in particular, help organisations achieve the following:
- Reduce fraud and cyber risks by detecting and preventing identity theft, account takeover and other malicious activities.
- Improve operational efficiency and compliance by streamlining identity verification.
- Increase innovation by leveraging identity data to create new business models and opportunities.
- Enhance customer experience by offering personalised and relevant products and services.
To generate and use identity insights effectively, organisations need to adopt a robust identity risk management framework that covers these aspects:
- Data collection and quality. Firms need to collect and maintain high-quality identity data from various sources, including internal systems, external partners, industry-shared data, biometrics and more.
- Data analysis and modelling. Organisations need to apply advanced analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning to transform identity data into actionable insights that can inform risk decisions.
- Data governance and ethics. Institutions need to ensure that identity data is used in a responsible and ethical manner, respecting the privacy and consent of data subjects, complying with relevant regulations and mitigating potential biases and discrimination.
- Data communication and visualisation. Companies must communicate and present identity insights to relevant stakeholders, including decision-makers, risk management teams, and other key personnel, in a clear and engaging way that can influence risk decisions and behaviours.
Compliant and verified intelligent identity insights (or identity risk scoring) provided by the Ekata Identity Engine empower businesses to leverage valuable insights within their internal frameworks, enabling smarter identity decisions. It is a proprietary machine learning-driven solution that combines two exclusive datasets which are then transformed into valuable data to enable you to accurately make smarter identity risk decisions. These datasets are the Ekata Identity Graph, which validates digital identity elements and how they are linked, and the Ekata Identity Network, which analyses how identity elements are being used in digital interactions.
Together, the Ekata Identity Graph and the Ekata Identity Network can provide you with the identity insights you need to come up with predictive data signals that will enable you to better understand who your customers are and how their information is being used online. With this, you will be able to make accurate and precise risk decisions about all your customers so you can mitigate fraud with greater certainty but in less time and using less effort and resources.
In other words, these two solutions brought together in tandem in the Ekata Identity Engine can help your organisation reduce fraud, mitigate cyber risks and achieve operational efficiency. These benefits collectively give you a competitive edge in the digital economy and put you at the forefront of the never-ending fight against fraud.
Visit the official Ekata website to find out more about the Ekata Identity Engine.
