FullCircl, a UK-based RegTech uniquely positioned at the intersection of revenue and regulation, today announces the release of its new State of Identity Verification Report.  The report exposes the knowledge gaps and missed opportunities currently costing firms an estimated 38% of potential new customers each year.

The key finding of the report is that many regulated businesses still have significant blind spots around customer onboarding, and that these represent wasted opportunities impacting customer attrition, compliance costs, and profitability.  The research found the rate of abandoned sign-ups is potentially 2.9x greater than businesses estimate.  The most common reason for this appears to be a total focus on regulatory compliance at the expense of customer experience, the study implies that this imbalance could be costing businesses dearly.

To reveal the true state of identity verification (IDV) today, FullCircl, surveyed over 1000 ‘nationally representative’ consumers in the UK, and then compared their opinions and perceptions against a survey of compliance professionals across a range of regulated industries. In total, FullCircl surveyed 1,521 respondents, comprising 464 professionals and 1057 individual consumers.

Of the 15 major findings contained within the report, key highlights include:

·       The average onboarding time is 35 minutes, which is 2.8x longer than customers would like.

·       38% of customers have abandoned account opening – much higher than businesses anticipate.  In fact, 98% grossly misjudge levels of drop-off.

·       User experience tops the poll as the biggest challenge facing compliance, and yet 54% are  still not actively grasping this opportunity to cost effectively boost acquisition.

·       53% of customers abandoned the sign-up process because they felt uncomfortable with the IDV process. But when they do experience secure, uncomplicated, and fast IDV it dramatically increases the number completing onboarding processes successfully

.       59% of business still rely on fully manual or mostly manual IDV processes – driving up onboarding time and complexity, whilst driving down customer satisfaction and profitability.

Andrew Yates, CEO at FullCircl commented: “One of the biggest onboarding challenges facing regulated businesses right now is how to successfully walk the tightrope between customer experience and regulatory compliance.  Unfortunately, it’s clear from our report that too many organisations still approach these as mutually exclusive issues.  Likewise, too many are still employing manual approaches to identity verification which is compounding the problem even further.”

He continued:  “It’s clear that a more sophisticated, future-proof approach to IDV is required to both manage risk and compliance and achieve positive customer outcomes. There are bright opportunities for those that get this right – bringing down the cost of acquisition whilst simultaneously driving up the customer experience and enhancing regulatory compliance.”