Blake Hall: Streamlining Customer Identification And Expanding Access In A Market Awash With Fraud

Blake Hall, Founder & CEO, ID.me will be speaking at the upcoming Benzinga Fintech Deal Day & Awards. Mark Nov. 13 on your calendar for the must-attend gathering in the fintech industry!

$212 billion. That is the amount of money involved in suspicious activity reports related to identity fraud that financial institutions submitted to the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in 2021 alone. With this staggering amount of potential identity fraud, it's important to understand what is giving fraudsters the edge—and why government actors and private companies must come together to end these costly crimes. 

Fraudsters target fragmented and increasingly archaic fraud prevention systems that allow them to compromise credentials and impersonate others. Bad actors can steal a real Social Security number belonging to someone with no credit profile, combine it with fictitious background information, and apply for credit and other financial products. Without strict verification procedures, those fraudsters can gain easy access to innocent victims' accounts, and there is very little those victims can do to protect themselves. As Kay Turner, Chief Digital Identity Advisor at FinCEN, notes, "The rise in remotely delivered financial services has presented challenges to digitizing a patchwork system of largely paper-based federal, state and local government identifiers, and credentials used in the customer identification processes."

Yet, the nature of the problem points directly at the solution. Fraud rings exploit the vulnerabilities inherent to a jumbled web of weak and aging systems. Thus, a streamlined shared services approach that allows for a “bird’s eye view” across organizations is required to build an effective fraud prevention system. With generative AI evolving and data breaches driving fraud rates ever higher, only synchronized approaches between government authority and private innovation can overcome the technological advances being used by criminals. 

ID.me's products offer this needed shared services solution, enabling secure communication across channels. ID.me stays ahead of fraudsters who harm individuals by:

1. Offering a trusted, portable credential that eliminates the need for other passwords. ID.me lets users take their data with them to eliminate needless friction. Users only verify their identity once and never have to do it again with any organization that accepts ID.me. With legacy identity verification solutions, every time a customer has to verify their identity, they have to fully reverify and provide sensitive personal data to the verification service—exposing potentially hundreds of opportunities for fraudsters to gain access. With ID.me, a user verifies once anywhere, and gets access everywhere. 

2. Improving customer experience across digital services. ID.me is committed to improving customers' access to benefits and services. We have embraced the IAL2 identity verification standard, which is the National Institute of Standards and Technology's gold standard for secure commercial identity verification. Moreover, ID.me's commitment to constantly improving its technology has resulted in significant operational improvements and product enhancements for customers. This has made it possible for almost 95% of new IAL2 credentials to be issued in less than 5 minutes of wait time.

3. Expanding equity across the digital divide. At ID.me, we are committed to realizing our digital equity initiative, "No Identity Left Behind." Traditional verification methods often leave "credit invisible" consumers at a disadvantage, including 19 million Americans who cannot obtain a credit score. ID.me offers a wide range of identity verification options, including online, video chat, and in-person, that empower individuals from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds to verify their identities. By accepting over 9,300 types of identity documents and introducing in-person kiosks at over 730 locations, we facilitate access to government benefits, even for those with limited internet access. 

Data from ID.me's recent work in Puerto Rico demonstrates the success of our approach in increasing digital equity. Verification methods that strictly depend on online records struggle to verify individuals with a small digital footprint or who lack financial records. From 2016 until 2022, only 23.9% of Puerto Rican taxpayers were able to verify their identities at one government agency. With ID.me, successful verification rates jumped to 78.6%—a three-fold increase. Our verification offerings, including our live video chat Trusted Referees, overcame the barriers that have historically stood in the way of equitable access to verification for underserved communities across the island.

Leaders in identity verification must continue to advance innovations around privacy and security to provide the confidence customers need to move towards more secure methods of identification. They must also continue to work with partners in government who both set and administer relevant policies. At ID.me, we're building not just one, but many avenues of opportunity to ensure everyone is included in these improvements in digital equity and security. I'm looking forward to speaking on this topic at Benzinga's Fintech Deal Day & Awards event on November 13. Ensuring privacy and security, preventing fraud, and expanding access to those who would be excluded without a steadfast commitment to digital equity must remain our top priorities in identity verification.

Blake Hall is the Co-Founder and CEO of ID.me, the next-generation digital identity network that simplifies how individuals securely prove their identity online. Consumers can verify their identity with ID.me once and seamlessly login across websites without creating a new password or verifying their identity again. 15 federal agencies, 30 states, and over 600 name-brand retailers use ID.me to verify the identity of customers. Prior to ID.me, Blake led a reconnaissance platoon in Iraq. He was awarded two Bronze Stars, one for stopping an Al-Qaida assault on a Combat Support Hospital in Mosul and the other for exceptional performance hunting high-value targets. Blake holds a Bachelor of Science magna cum laude from Vanderbilt University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.