The Digital Offering Allows Banks to Auto-approve More Underbanked Consumer Groups like College Students with Low or No Credit as well as Teachers, Military service members, and Healthcare workers
SheerID, the leading Identity Marketing Platform, today announced the availability of several financial services products that instantly verify an applicant’s student enrollment, military status, individual identity for anti-money laundering, and state of employment for financial products such as credit cards and personal loans. The new digital offering allows financial institutions to approve more thin-file applicants with insight beyond standard credit bureau data. In addition, banks can build very personalized customer acquisition campaigns to grow digital accounts and accelerate their digital transformation.
“It’s no secret that the financial services industry is fighting for the next wave of customers,” stated Sanjib Kalita CMO and Editor in Chief of Money 2020. “Yet, a majority of financial marketers can only do ‘basic’ personalization – that is, marketing outreach based on limited information such as first and last name. SheerID offers a novel approach for acquiring coveted groups such as Gen Z and military who have higher expectations, by providing exclusive segment-specific offers that support the latest privacy standards.”
Limitations of credit bureaus
Verifying employment and military status as well as assessing thin-file credit applicants – particularly young consumers with little to no credit history – can be a challenging and expensive task. To date, financial institutions have had to rely primarily on credit bureaus to provide a financial picture of prospective customers. However, when examining applicants for these segments or those with little to no credit history, credit bureaus are often unable to provide meaningful insight. And when confirming an applicant’s current employment, records often miss employees from small businesses, gig workers, and sole proprietorships. These constraints significantly limit the number of applicants that financial institutions can approve; and, in turn, put an unnecessary cap on the amount of business these companies can do.
An innovative approach to applicant verification: Identity Marketing
SheerID now offers a faster and more accurate way to identify eligible customers. The company’s “Identity Marketing” platform provides the following solutions for financial services:
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Digital account acquisition: Marketers can create a gated, personalized offer for an exclusive credit card, or special loan rate for students, teachers, healthcare workers or military members. By adding SheerID digital verification to the application workflow, marketers can instantly and accurately ensure eligibility for the offer.
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Decision support: Instantly verify employment status for thin-file and credit-invisible applicants, including gig economy workers, sole proprietors, and people with multiple jobs. This allows financial institutions to extend credit for personal loans to sizable populations that aren’t visible by credit bureaus.
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Regulatory compliance: Digitally verify an applicant’s military status or identity instantly for a simple and fast customer experience when complying with SCRA, MLA, and AML regulations.
Authoritative Data Provides Highest Verification Assurance
SheerID, through a number of strategic partnerships, is the only company offering instant verification of customers using live, authoritative data, not data that is inferred or scraped off the Internet. Examples of authoritative data sources include the Office of the Registrar for student offers, a dozen military databases including the United States Department of Defense to verify military personnel, and access to the most recent employment data for 51M employers in the United States. Because an authoritative source is the datasource of record for these customer groups, there is an inherent, vested interest to maintain the highest level of assurance.
Once a consumer provides their information to the financial institution, SheerID’s API matches their information to numerous partner databases. In subseconds, SheerID confirms whether the person is eligible, and returns a “yes,” which automatically triggers approval, or a “no,” which means the consumer needs to provide more information through a 24×7 human-powered document review process.
“We have learned so much from working with some of the largest brands in the world. Most importantly, honoring a person for their life stage or profession provides a powerful way for brands to make a strong and lasting connection with consumers,” stated Jake Weatherly, CEO of SheerID. “We’re excited to now offer these same benefits to financial institutions, bringing focus to the enormous opportunities they have in front of them.”
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