Who Are You? Less IDK, More IDV

I was born and raised in Brazil, and like most Brazilians, I have a very long name. My last name consists of four words. When I moved to New York in 2007, I decided to obtain New York State identification. However, when I visited the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office, I was informed that I could not apply for a state ID because my last name was too long and wouldn’t fit in the name field of the DMV’s system. I was devastated. 

Over the next few years, verifying my identity in the U.S. remained a huge hassle, and my lengthy last name got butchered every time I applied for a new service. Eventually, I decided to adopt my husband’s last name, which enabled me to finally obtain a New York driver’s license. 

When I joined Docusign in 2018, I relocated to Paris, France, which created a new set of identification challenges. I quickly discovered that in the EU, my birth name constituted my legal name. So, I spent the next four years once again struggling with verifying my identity because my identification documents displayed contradictory names. It was only when I moved back to the U.S. last summer that my long ordeal finally ended. 

This personal journey has informed my professional passion for making identity verification simpler and more accessible for everyone, no matter where they were born, where they live, or the length of their names. Since joining Docusign, I’m glad to say that I’ve finally found a company that’s equally committed to this goal.

Confronting the Agreement Trap

Docusign’s identity verification solutions don’t exist in a vacuum—they’re part of the Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) platform—our answer to a critical but often overlooked problem in modern business: the “Agreement Trap.”  

We use this term to describe a common business challenge: inefficient and outdated processes leading to static and disconnected agreements and an inability to access meaningful data insights. Ultimately, this leads to lost revenue, ill-prepared negotiations, and legal and compliance risks.

In the context of identity verification, the Agreement Trap manifests in various ways. Traditionally, organizations require customers to visit their offices in person to present physical identification documents. Alternatively, the customer may be asked to send copies of their identity documents via unsecured email or post. Or they have to manually type identifying information into a website or online application. This often leads to lost agreements, data entry errors, and typos, lengthening the onboarding process and resulting in frustration for both the ‘sender’ (business) and ‘signer’ (customer).

That’s where Docusign IAM with fully integrated identity verification comes in. It enables organizations to accelerate revenue, unlock value, and reduce agreement risk by:

• Creating agreements in a collaborative and integrated way

• Establishing a more secure process for sending and signing agreements

• Verifying the identity of all parties

• Proactively managing and monitoring agreement performance

• Capturing and displaying key signer identity information for compliance purposes

ID Verification (IDV) does more than just secure agreements

Organizations across industries are prioritizing the need for effective identity verification processes for security reasons, but also for other critical factors, including:

• Risk mitigation: The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimates that organizations worldwide lose 5% of revenue to fraud each year. This is a significant risk, and organizations must consider the rising costs of identity theft and how it will impact their business.

• Compliance: Most organizations are subject to some level of regulatory scrutiny, a burden that’s highly dependent on geographical jurisdiction and industry sector. Compliance requirements are greater in highly regulated sectors like financial services and healthcare, in which complying with all applicable laws and ever-changing regulatory guidance can be complicated and expensive. 

• Consumer expectations: As consumers become increasingly tech-savvy, there’s a growing acceptance and expectation to engage in a digital identity verification process when conducting transactions online. In fact, more than 8 out of 10 users find digital identity verification both secure (81%) and convenient (88%).

• Industry-agnostic threats: Identity fraud is rampant across almost every industry. Retail has witnessed a 20% increase in fraud since 2019, and cases of medical identity theft have increased sixfold, from 6,800 in 2017 to 43,000 in 2021. This growth has exploded as more businesses require customers to exchange personally identifying information digitally or online.

Knowing your customer in the digital age

Let’s explore how ID verification works in a new account opening scenario at a bank or credit union, where following know your customer (KYC) protocols is critically important for compliance and security reasons.

One of the most common ways of identifying a consumer in the U.S. is through knowledge-based authentication (KBA), a process that involves asking the customer a few questions about their personal financial history.

The problem with this approach is that virtually anyone’s personal information is available online today. This means that a user’s ability to provide such details or to answer a security question doesn’t necessarily prove that the individual is the person they claim to be. It demonstrates that the person trying to gain access has obtained the correct information, possibly through illegal or unauthorized means.

Alternatively, many financial institutions still require new customers who started the new account opening process online to visit a branch to present physical identification documents. This is a version of the “last mile” challenge, as in-person identity verification is often a costly, frustrating and time-consuming experience.

Enhanced identity verification using biometrics and liveness detection is a practical, modern alternative to KBA or in-person verification that provides organizations with stronger, more secure user identification while offering customers a better, more streamlined user experience. 

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), “using biometrics for identifying human beings offers some unique advantages because only biometrics can identify you. Used alone, or together with other authentication technologies … can provide higher degrees of security than other technologies.” 

Biometric technologies establish or verify personal identity by recognizing a physiological or behavioral characteristic, such as a fingerprint, palm, face, or iris. 

For decades, biometric technologies were used primarily in law enforcement. However, over the past several years, the marketplace for biometrics solutions has grown significantly and now includes a wide range of public and private sector applications worldwide. Biometrics are more secure because they offer higher degrees of certainty, making it harder for fraudsters to impersonate someone.

Today, opening a new account online is simple, thanks to the modern agreement process. Let’s use the same new account opening scenario we provided above. Through Docusign ID Verification, bank customers can apply for a new account and complete the identity verification process completely online. Through an intuitive and fully integrated biometric detection step, the system not only assesses the authenticity of the applicant’s identity document, but also ensures that the signer is physically present by requiring them to complete a live selfie and perform randomized head-tilting gestures to ensure a match with the photo on their document, and that no pre-recordings are in use.

Then, the applicant applies their eSignature to the agreement, ensuring quick, secure and full remote customer onboarding. All KYC steps are completed, verified, and stored securely for compliance.

IDV in action 

For more than 30 years, McCloskey Motors has made it easy for customers to find and purchase the right used vehicle for their needs. But as with most dealerships, the company’s biggest bottleneck has always been paperwork.

Docusign helped the dealership digitize its paper forms and tweak its workflow until it had built a paperless car sale process. From a customer’s first inquiry to the finalization of a contract, everything happened online—except, of course, for the test drive. 

Moving the car-buying process online involves more than simply digitizing forms. The dealership also needed a reliable way to verify the identity of each of its online customers, and Docusign ID Verification provided precisely what they were looking for. Now, the company can clearly show that it’s complying with state identity verification requirements while protecting it from the high-dollar losses resulting from ID-based fraud.

By digitizing its contract and identity verification processes, McCloskey Motors reduced the time it takes to buy a vehicle by 75%, reclaiming 350 hours per month for customers and employees. 

“Docusign ID Verification provided the enhanced signer verification [they] needed,” said Mike Philips, Business Development Executive at McCloskey Motors. 

Manage identification seamlessly

Docusign’s Identify portfolio helps organizations across virtually every industry achieve greater certainty in their agreement processes. Identify goes beyond security to provide companies with a solution to inefficient and outdated agreement processes and platforms, while helping them meet requirements like KYC, anti-money laundering (AML), and regional regulations. By tackling the Agreement Trap head-on, modern digital identity verification through Docusign IAM helps streamline agreement workflows and provide employees and customers with a more frictionless, collaborative experience.

To learn more about how a connected signing and identity verification experience can help your organization streamline agreement workflows, achieve better security and maintain compliance with regulatory requirements, explore Docusign Identify.