ICO Sandbox Helps Develop Innovative Tools to Combat Financial Crime

  • Security
  • 05.11.2020 05:45 pm

Two innovations to help companies tackle financial crime are the latest results to come out of the ICO's regulatory sandbox. Both have been developed as part of the beta phase and follow the first two reports on Heathrow Airport and JISC which were published In July.

Onfido: Mitigating bias in customer identity verification (LINK to report)

Onfido Limited has worked in the Sandbox to identify and mitigate bias present in the biometric identity verification technology it designed to enable its clients to prove that their customers are who they claim to be.

For example, a financial institution would likely use the technology to prove the identity of a customer who wants to open a bank account. That customer will be asked to provide a digital photo of their identity document and a selfie taken using a mobile phone or other device.

Onfido will then analyse those images to determine the likelihood that the identity document is genuine; and the face in the selfie matches the face in the identity document, and that the selfie image does not display evidence of signs of fraud or facial spoofing. If the identity verification check is successful, the customer will be able continue with the rest of the process. Onfido’s work in the Sandbox ensures that its product is fair and inclusive for all users undergoing identity verifications.

Future Flow: Data flows (LINK to report)

Future Flow Research Inc provides an analytics platform which monitors the flow of funds in the financial system with the potential to combat financial crime. The platform enables financial institutions to contribute pseudonymised transactional data in bulk, enabling multiple financial institutions, Regulators, and agencies to work together to detect and ultimately tackle electronic financial crime.

This collaborative approach to fighting financial crime opens up the prospect of higher detection rates with lower false positives, while reducing the burden of scrutiny on each individual and business consumer.

Organisations who are considering developing tools and services in data sharing and children’s privacy online can register their interest to take part in the next phase of the sandbox

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