KYC (Know Your Customer) compliance
Financial Institutions (FIs) need to set up appropriate identity verification mechanisms to secure the onboarding of new customers to their services and comply with stringent and evolving regulations such as Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Directive v5 and v6 and PSD2 in Europe.
Moreover, many financial services KYC procedures require demanding identity verification and genuine user confirmation during the entire client life cycle.
Learn how the onboarding services in our Gemalto IdCloud platform can help you.
Swift and secure customer onboarding
Today's customers expect to open a new account online from their laptop or mobile.
FIs need to offer a fully digital onboarding experience to avoid abandonment during the enrolment phase while adhering to stringent Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations.
To be able to offer this, you need identity-proofing services such as:
- document verification,
- face recognition,
- anti-money laundering checks (AML)
There are many document verification solutions suppliers. However, what sets the Gemalto IdCloud platform apart is that you also get access to risk management services essential in the onboarding process to reduce application fraud.
Gemalto IdCloud risk management performs additional background checks such as user attributes, device details and network information. These are all part of an essential step called identity affirmation and increase confidence by providing supporting evidence for an identity claim.
By adding identity affirmation, you can introduce adaptive onboarding and start by checking for any signs of potentially fraudulent activity before launching the identity-proofing process. The goal is to prevent ID fraud during digital onboarding, but it can also lower the total cost of ownership by avoiding additional checks and abandoning high-risk enrolments early.
Discover more about fraud detection in banking.
Document verification
Document verification is a digital verification process used to verify whether a user's ID document is authentic.
The customer uses their mobile device to capture the ID document and sends the photo to the Gemalto IdCloud server for verification, which screens for all security elements to prove authenticity.
A score is produced for every verification screening, and the FI will be informed whether a customer's document is fake or genuine.
Advanced document verification includes checking the following:
- Data integrity
- Data format
- Visible security features or patterns: watermarks, stamps, line patterns etc
- Machine Readable Zone (MRZ) and cross-verification with visual information
- Expiry date
- Data extraction, such as name and date of birth, to be used in the Financial institution's CRM system
Our solution also supports NFC to read electronic ID documents. It gives a foolproof way to extract data stored on the ID chip and obtain the customer's information, including a high-quality digital copy of their image.
Please find out more in our ebook on customer digital onboarding in banking.
Facial recognition
To complete the remote onboarding process, customers must prove they are a real person and physically present during the onboarding process. This step is essential to associate the physical user with their ID document.
The facial match service asks the user to take a selfie which it then compares with the image extracted from the ID document, which has already been verified as genuine. Again, customers can use their mobile to do this, streamlining the remote process.
Thales' facial recognition technology is one of the best in the world. Our service also includes passive liveness detection, which the end-user will be unaware of. This process guarantees a live person is performing the request.
Risk management for identity affirmation
Identity affirmation technology harnesses the power of four layers of intelligence. Each layer transparently analyses user and environment activities from different perspectives to identify high risks before any harm is done.
Together, they create a dynamic profile of each event, giving you the confidence to identify 'good' consumers based on their online interactions.
Anti-money laundering checks
Anti-money laundering (AML) and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) regulations are being imposed and reinforced worldwide when onboarding new customers and fighting identity fraud. FIs must now strengthen their identification of customers using reliable and independently sourced documents, data or information.
With the latest AML v5 and v6 regulations, new customer registration requires PEPs and sanction list verification and proper risk assessment policies to be in place.
Only once these additional AML sanction lists are checked for each end-user attempting onboarding can the identity verification be completed.
A full digital onboarding process need multiple verification layers
One cloud platform to secure onboarding and access to digital banking
Our cloud-based managed services enable FIs to combine identity-proofing and strong customer authentication to secure onboarding and digital banking access.
Risk management further increases security and enhances the customer experience with identity affirmation and risk-based authentication.
With one single platform.

More resources on KYC services
- Thales Gemalto IdCloud
- Authentication services with Thales Gemalto IdCloud
- Risk management services with Thales Gemalto IdCloud
- Know your customer in banking
- More on digital ID (global trends)
- Juniper's TOP 15 vendors (leader board)
Documents

Thales Gemalto IdCloud for Onboarding
Cloud based solution to secure onboarding to digital banking services
Gemalto IdCloud KYC [PDF - 2.4mb]
ID verification for financial institutions
Verify your customers’ genuine identity with frictionless ID document forensics and biometric checks, optimised for digital banking
ID verification for financial institutions
How NewBanking and Thales enable GDPR and AML data compliance through an innovative collaboration
A collaborative solution to solve collection, management & verification of personal documents
Read more
Everything you need to know about AML 5
The fifth Anti Money Laundering Directive (AMLD5) set a new set of rules to help financial entities protect against the risks of money laundering and financing of terrorism
Download the infographic