IDENTITY VERIFICATION: INCLUSION
Aglobalchallenge Digital identity verification provider Truilioo set itself a big task in ensuring everyone in the world can participate in the digital economy. Now that seems more urgent than ever. Hal Lonas and Garient Evans discuss inclusion, trust and the impact of a crisis-accelerated shift to online services With more than a billion people lacking any legal form of identification, and therefore denied access to even the most basic financial services, the post-pandemic ambition to ‘level up’ society leaves many policymakers unequal to the task, however virtuous the ambition. And, of all the available financial services, insurance is increasingly being seen as a critical tool for not only reducing the limitations faced by many people who are anonymous to the system; but also for helping those who have emerged from poverty to manage their risk and thus, hopefully, never fall back into hardship. During the pandemic, the absence of such a safety net has been the painful reality for millions, especially in countries without public healthcare that’s free at the point of delivery, forcing families with no life or health cover to pay for treatment out of inadequate savings (if they have them at all), or else stare into a hungry abyss following the loss of a breadwinner.
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TheInsurtechMagazine | Issue 6
It was precisely to avoid such human catastrophes 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 multiple, verifiable data sources that are dynamically updated. With more accessible personal information comes more ability for people to control their economic outcomes, it argued. They would be better able to access the resources they needed to prosper on an individual level, and this would unleash new levels of growth on a country-wide scale. Put another way, it was talking about the levelling up of the global economy, long before the phrase became a vote winner. In the 10 years since it was founded, Trulioo has refined the technology with which it hopes to achieve its purpose, and expanded the territories in which it hopes to deliver it. It now provides real-time
identity verification for five billion customers and 330 million businesses, in nearly 200 countries, through its GlobalGateway identification platform – it’s become the world’s largest identity verification marketplace. In 2020, Trulioo was listed among Canada’s 100 fastest-growing companies, with an annual growth of 503 per cent. But the challenge – or, looked at through an investor’s lens, the business opportunity – is still huge. McKinsey forecasts that the identity verification (IDV)-as-a-service industry will grow to US$20billion by 2022 with a total addressable market growth of nine-to-15 per cent annually. Throw into that mix the huge and many permanent lifestyle changes forced upon the world by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the result is a demand for digital IDV that has never been greater. In early June, Trulioo completed a $394million Series D round, putting it at a $1.75billion valuation, led by TCV, one of the world’s largest growth equity firms, www.fintech.finance
