FINANCE FOR GOOD: ID VERIFICATION Worldwide footprint: Trulioo is growing in line with its mission to identify everyone, globally
A world on the move There’s never been a more urgent need to create a digital identity system that keeps both people and their data safe. With fresh capital and ambitious expansion plans, Trulioo is determined to be that solution. Senior VP of Identity Solutions Garient Evans and Chief Technology Officer Hal Lonas, who both recently joined Trulioo’s expanding San Diego office, explain how For most of us lucky enough to live in relatively wealthy and peaceful societies, not being able to move around the world at will during the pandemic was an inconvenience. Now that 2.9 billion people have received their first COVID-19 jab, just over one billion of whom have been fully vaccinated, many are regaining that freedom. But international travel comes at a price: your liberty for your data, specifically, your health status. Meanwhile, 80 million people weren’t lucky enough to sit out the pandemic in their home country. They were forcibly displaced by war and internal conflict, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). That figure was a grim milestone and one that’s likely to be surpassed over the next few months as conflict in Afghanistan once again escalates, China tightens its grip on Hong Kong, and a humanitarian crisis deepens in Yemen. The World Economic Forum estimates that, in a normal year, there are
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TheFintechMagazine | Issue 21
272 million people – 3.5 per cent of the world’s citizens – moving across borders, mostly for work. But ‘normal’ years may no longer be a sensible yardstick. The International Organization for Migration predicts that there is another, even greater force, that will see huge personal, inter- and well as intra-continental upheaval , and that’s climate change. Unchecked, the IOM fears it could create anything from 25 million to two billion ‘climate-displaced persons’. The twin existential threats of a global pandemic and global warming have demonstrated that we are all citizens of the same, vulnerable world, but among the poor and the growing number of uprooted are many who cannot prove they are citizens of anywhere. They make up the one billion lacking any legal form of identification, and therefore denied access to even the most basic financial and other essential services. Against this backdrop, governments’ post-pandemic ambition to ‘level up’
society leaves many policymakers unequal to the task, however virtuous the ambition. At the same time, governments are wrestling with the politically sensitive and technically challenging issue of how to attach a COVID-19 vaccination record to an individual in such a way that it can be accessed anywhere by those with the authority to view it – and that could be anyone from a border official to a nightclub bouncer. It’s likely that, without such certification, international travel will be limited or denied, while, in some areas, including certain US states, even grocery shops will be off-limits. It was precisely to avoid people being robbed of the fundamental human right to prove their existence and claim the freedoms that others enjoy that Canadian regtech Trulioo began building a digital ‘trust network’ back in 2011. Its mission was to ensure that everyone was someone in the eyes of the world – and, specifically, of financial institutions – by creating an online digital identity from www.fintechf.com
