Consumers want to use both digital and physical channels to manage their finances and meet their goals, and while digital technology combined with self-service gives consumers choice, convenience, and empowerment -- three things they highly value -- it exacerbates issues with customer identification and verification and increases fraud risk when transacting business.

To counter this, financial institutions must have a complete strategy to serve these needs and address the risk exposure of doing so by blending the right technology innovation, risk foundation, and relevant operational functionality to align with customer experience and service. A complete strategy must also encompass digital and physical channels to provide an omni channel customer‑centric delivery strategy integrated with customer authentication and fraud prevention.

Some capabilities an omni channel solution should provide for customer authentication and fraud prevention include:

1. Identity authentication methods that use software and hardware capabilities to verify the customer’s identity before giving access to sensitive data or allowing transactions or services to occur.
2. Identity verification that validates an applicant’s identity actually exists, and the person is who they say they are, using automated processes performed at the time of customer onboarding, application for a product or service, or a new account opening.
3. Compliance processes that ensure an institution’s processes are aligned to enforce legal requirements, industry regulations, and best practices, and to provide proof of process.
4. Data quality that measures data’s usefulness for its given purpose. Its quality is determined by factors such as accuracy, completeness, currency, reliability, and relevance.
5. Risk assessment that uses predictive analytics to quantify and provide risk scores for the customer over time and for a specific transaction or service encounter.
6. Customer knowledge that is the ongoing aggregate customer experience and insight that is created and used to drive actionable decisions during customer interactions with an institution.

Banks and credit unions can benefit from these functions with the use of ARGO Connects, a customer journey‑centric solution for acquiring customers, nurturing and converting leads, ongoing customer engagement, fulfilling accounts, retaining, growing, and servicing for consumer and business customers in an Omni-delivery ecosystem.

For more information, view ARGO Connects, Omni Channel Fulfillment interview document.