Technology Innovation Comes To Regulation

As President of Trulioo, Jon Jones is passionate about protecting consumers and businesses from all facets of fraud and subsequent loss — but he doesn’t believe that doing so effectively has to come at the expense of technological innovation.

Jones recently spoke with PYMNTS about how emerging “RegTech” (regulatory technology) companies — among which he classifies Trulioo — are simultaneously helping businesses securely navigate increasing regulatory hurdles while moving innovation forward.

PYMNTS:  You classify yourself as a RegTech company. What is RegTech and why is it getting so much attention?

JJ:  Regulatory Technology, or RegTech, has emerged as a result of the growing need for businesses to effectively and efficiently stay compliant in the face of increased regulatory protocols. Increased regulation typically brings increased consumer protection, but it can often stifle innovation especially within the Financial Technology, or FinTech, sector. As FinTech continues to grow at an exponential rate, RegTech is emerging as an ever-increasing requirement to ensure regulatory hurdles can be jumped quickly but securely. In many ways, RegTech can be viewed as an innovation enabler.

At Trulioo we believe that businesses are only as strong as their weakest link, which is often outside of their direct sphere of influence. Any RegTech solution needs to be fully transparent and trusted in regards to data flow, data retention, and data use – all elements that we take to heart.

PYMNTS:  What is oftentimes overlooked by decision-makers in your space regarding data?

JJ:  When making decisions about data, the top considerations to include are: 1) More data is not necessarily the best answer – adding more hay to an already large haystack doesn’t replace the need to extract real knowledge via machine learning techniques that can be leveraged, 2) Data integrity is essential especially as it pertains to regulatory compliance, both in regards to the accuracy of the data and in its transparency, and 3) Look for diverse and emerging data capabilities and sources – Trulioo was first-to-market with social identity verification and we are making the augmentation of traditional data verification and “cyber” data verification a reality.

PYMNTS:  How would you define your company’s approach to innovation?

JJ:  Innovation is at the core of the Trulioo culture – our company mission is to help drive financial access for all and we recognize that in order to achieve that our business needs to continually innovate. We listen closely to our clients – where they are heading, what they need to get there, and consequently how we can best support them – plus we’re keeping a close eye on the global market where the biggest threat can turn out to be the biggest opportunity. We invest heavily in incremental innovation … not necessarily always the sexy stuff, but where our clients see immediate and continued benefit.

PYMNTS:  What is the most innovative thing that you have introduced into the market and what value did it deliver to the stakeholder group that was its target?

JJ:  Trulioo’s GlobalGateway platform enables our clients and partners to verify the identity of a global consumer via trusted and diverse data repositories – we have in essence created a trusted data marketplace to verify over 4 billion people today. GlobalGateway has been designed from the ground up to satisfy global KYC and AML regulatory requirements, and by taking this approach our solution also easily serves non regulatory use cases, such as fraud and risk mitigation, where verifying a consumer’s identity is required. Consumer engagement and enablement begins with trust, and trust often begins with KYC.  The ever present risk of fraud, while substantial and real, should not bar the vast majority of well-intended consumers around the world from seeking and obtaining goods and services (many of which are foundational to establishing a quality life for themselves and their families).

We do all this through a single API – clients code in once to gain access to over 150 data sources across more than 45 countries today, both of which are expanding daily. And we do this within a few seconds.

By leveraging the GlobalGateway platform, clients are able to:

Drive lower operational costs by realizing higher online consumer verification rates globally, therefore reducing costly manual reviews.

Reduce compliance and fraud risk through a corroboration of identity data attributes across diverse data sets.

Enhance customer satisfaction by enabling fulfillment of consumer requests in real-time.

PYMNTS:  What’s on the horizon for Trulioo?

JJ:  We are focused on executing our core roadmap that keeps pace with both the availability and viability of unique and diverse data assets worldwide.  Our clients rely on us as a trusted partner to provide a host of intelligence around identities with the aim of delivering consistent, measurable and economically practical services.

In this age of explosive innovation within FinTech and RegTech, we understand that many processes invoke layers of diverse services. Continued collaboration with our clients and partners helps to ensure that our capabilities are cohesive with other technologies and operational processes with which they are often married. If you think understanding regulatory requirements is complicated and complex in one region, try 45+ countries and jurisdictions. We understand our clients’ pain points and strive to provide them with timely solutions that help them expand into new markets safer, faster, easier and more efficiently.

Being actively engaged with our clients, partners, regulators, policymakers and industry leaders and influencers fuel innovation at our company. Having a holistic view of the ecosystem will help to ensure that global businesses, institutions, and consumers alike are well informed as to the availability of services that can widen the channels for trusted transactions across the world.