REGTECH: IDENTITY VERIFICATION
Nowhere to hide Garient Evans, VP of Identity Solutions for Trulioo, says the global identity verification company will ‘turn over every rock’ when it comes to data transparency and holding the most powerful to account The shady dealings of the rich and powerful revealed in the so-called ‘Pandora Papers’ rocked the world in October 2021. Published by the Washington DC-based not-for-profit International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the papers comprise of more than 11 million documents that reveal the tax-sheltering offshore deals and assets of more than 100 billionaires and 300 public officials – from former UK prime ministers to past US presidents – and the companies set up to facilitate them. It followed similar revelations in the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, published in 2016 and 2017 respectively, but the latest cache of 2.94 terabytes of information, centred on 14 offshore advisors and service providers, make Pandora the biggest exposure yet. Crunching this volume of data was no mean feat for the journalists from 117 countries who collaborated to crack it, including those from major outlets, including BBC Panorama, the Washington Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Le Monde in France. They unveiled an unsavoury sign of our times – made all the more unpalatable, perhaps, by the fact such practices are taking place as the world at large is struggling to get back on its feet after one
6
TheFintechMagazine | Issue 22
of the most serious pandemics in history. Breaking as it did, during such a fragile geo-political operating environment, most of us have reacted with outrage to the scandal. It also caught the eye of experts at Canadian-headquartered identity verification (IDV) company, Trulioo. Founded with the ambition to promote data transparency and see everyone in the world able to access a digital identity so that they can have equal opportunities in life, Trulioo sees revelations such as the Pandora Papers as confirmation of the justice in its mission to level up. It’s now turning its data spotlight on the shadows where unethical companies and individuals have, until now, been able to hide from their fiscal responsibilities. Imagine if the wealth of information, worldwide, were so rich, and so well-understood, that there were no hiding places left for journalists like the ICIJ’s to unearth. Trulioo’s senior VP of identity solutions, Garient Evans, says the company plans to double its own data sources, coupled with highly sophisticated ways of making sense of them. The aim is full transparency, enabling companies to do business, governments to maintain tax regimes and national security, and individuals to manage their finances, in full knowledge of what and who they’re dealing with. “Our business verification can get to the ultimate beneficial owner of a shell company that is trying to hide assets, which meets our mission of not only identifying individuals but also helping companies that want to do business with other corporations,” Evans explains. “We want to shed light on different corporations and their movements around the world, to help companies
know their suppliers, their merchants, their business. We call it know your business (KYB), and we think [the need for that] is a trend confirmed by the Pandora Papers. It shows there is a need for services that can provide this type of transparency, and we’re excited to be able to offer that. “So, if you’re a global financial institution, or a marketplace, and you have to know what businesses you’re dealing with, who the owners are and whether or not they’re on a financial sanctions or designated persons list for terrorist financing or money laundering, we can help.” Dramatically increasing the number of worldwide data sources that Trulioo can draw upon is key to enabling this. “We’re embracing the challenge our CEO gave us: to double our data sources, in terms of the amount of countries and the depth of coverage we have,” Evans continues. “We are turning over every rock to identify high-quality sources around the world, to offer them back to our customers. “We’ve learned that even the largest global players need quick, convenient, secure access to data sources, particularly from emerging markets where they could go to procure their own data from authoritative sources, like credit bureaus, government registries and utilities. However, they find it faster, cheaper and more reliable to come to Trulioo, because we’ve already prenegotiated the arrangements, implemented them, standardised them, and made sure they’re robust enough to provide quality identity verification solutions in these high-growth markets.” Bringing emerging markets into the fold is not only commercially attractive. It's also essential to Trulioo’s goals of increasing financial inclusion and transparency, and helping to prevent fraud. www.fintechf.com
