South African Fintech ThisIsMe Creates An Electronic Know Your Customer Process

The Benzinga Global Fintech Awards are a yearly showcase of the best and brightest in fintech. In preparation for its biggest installment yet in May 2018, we're profiling the companies competing for the BZ Awards.

Our next feature is on ThisIsMe.

What does your company do?

Brennan Wright, head of marketing:

Business

We strive to close transactional trust & compliance gaps by focusing on understanding the ‘trust points’ on both sides of transactions. We focus on bringing more trust into transactions through advanced multifactor identification and enhanced due diligence technology - better enabling our clients to reduce fraud, improve onboarding and increase revenue while providing a real-time, valuable customer experience.

Individuals

We focus on providing individuals with a safe, privacy-protected platform to secure their identity data and to share this data with our merchant partners, eliminating the need to repeat KYC applications. We are committed to protecting the privacy of our users and strive to maintain a secure, privacy compliant platform for our users.

What unique problem does it solve?

Challenges

Incorrect data - Very often organizations use information from Credit Bureau as single validation, believing the Credit Bureau which has its role, is the definitive source of accurate information. This is so far from reality, Credit Bureau data is dated, often incorrect and because they are not permitted usually to correct the data – compounding the data quality issue.

Excludes the user - Most companies exclude the user from their process, believing that the customer will always update them if they change their cell number or bank account! The user if involved can make the change once and update across their known relationships totally in their control.

Security of the user’s information - Typically across the world to open a bank account or a mobile phone contract, the user has to undertake a KYC process, the quality of the information recorded is often poor and gives the credit bureau their problem and often the security of those documents is as risk, more often than not, photocopied and filed (legal obligation but can be used to open other accounts easily by a fraudster).

Speed - Ensuring that the eKYC customer experience is as fast as customers expect it to be when using mobile/digital platforms is a challenge. Our solution operates in real-time and has been streamlined to ensure that the entire eKYC process is as fast as possible across various devices.

Accuracy - Applicants data is often be scattered across various sources in multiple forms. Our technology assists in cleansing the data and presenting it in a more accurate, usable way.

Tampering - Detecting fraudulent documents is a challenge - even with face to face verification processes in place. Our Machine Learning enhanced Tamper Detection technology accurately detects fraudulent documents.

Scalability - Enterprise level eKYC solutions that meet the rigors of real-world, market-wide application are challenging to setup. We have built our systems to easily scale, rapidly, on-demand on a global scale.

Compliant - Our systems have been built with GDPR and FATF in mind - they are fully compliant and stand up to the compliance tests of global banks.

Customer-Centricity - We build with the end user front and center of our product development plans. Providing the most seamless, customer-centric solution that fits for our merchant partners is what drives us.

Who are your customers?

100+ merchants including:

• Three of the five major banks in South Africa
• Silica
• Sanlam

How long have you been in business?

Four years.

Where are you located?

Cape Town, South Africa.

Who is your company's leadership? What kind of experience do they have?

• David Thomas
• Juan Furmie
• Armond Furmie
• Miles Marshall
• Kevin Lewis
• Brennan Wright

Who are your investors, if any?

Private investor who wishes not to be named.

Is there anything else Benzinga should know about your company?

We've recently won:

• Best African Fintech Award, 2017 (African Fintech Awards)
• Best in Banking Innovation, 2017 (African Fintech Awards)
• Gartner Aspiring Innovator, 2017
• Mondato DFC Innovation Award
• SEC@CT Wayra Pitching Competition

To check out companies like This Is Me for yourself, grab a ticket to the Benzinga Global Fintech Awards May 15-16 in New York.