Equifax, the business and consumer insights expert, has announced a partnership with HooYu, leading customer onboarding and KYC RegTech provider, to expand its range of identity and fraud tools.

The strategic partnership will support Equifax clients across regulated and non-regulated sectors that are striving to improve their digital customer onboarding experience, and bolster their anti-fraud processes, while meeting anti-money laundering compliance requirements.

The collaboration will support the many financial and professional services businesses, including mortgage lenders, building societies and financial advisers, struggling to verify the identity of new customers via traditional methods due to Covid-19 restrictions. The solution allows companies to accelerate digital transformation, adapting to changing consumer behaviour and societal trends towards less face-to-face interaction. It also provides robust safeguards against fraud during a period when malicious cybercrime has risen exponentially, with Google reporting that scammers are sending 18 million Covid-19 related hoax emails a day to Gmail accounts*. 

Equifax selected HooYu to provide a seamless extension to the existing Equifax database identity check solutions. Equifax clients can now choose from any of the configurable HooYu services including ID document validation, digital footprint analysis, proof of address matching, facial biometrics, geolocation and identity confidence scoring.

Equifax clients will also be able to deploy the HooYu user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) tools within their own website or app to help guide customers through the process, with Equifax and HooYu orchestrating the range of identity services to help maximise the success of the new KYC platform.            

Keith McGill, Head of Fraud & ID at Equifax commented, “By partnering with HooYu, we can simplify and improve KYC journeys for our clients, helping them to enhance end-user experience, safeguard future income streams, protect against the increasing threat of fraud, and meet regulatory standards.”

David Pope, Marketing Director at HooYu said, “We ran a poll on an Equifax client webinar and unsurprisingly 70% of companies said they were currently in the process of streamlining their digital onboarding process**. The march towards digitalisation is gathering pace, especially at this difficult time when many financial services providers and professional services firms have lost their face-to-face onboarding channel while in Covid-19 lockdown.”