Norway's Signicat has secured €1.36 million in phase two funding from the EU's Horizon 2020 programme with the objective of creating a fully-compliant ID assurance and digital onboarding toolbox for use by European financial institutions.
The grant follows the completion of phase one, undertaken by Signicat and funded by Horizon 2020 in December 2016. This analysed the need for and applicability of digital onboarding in selected countries.
Working with Innopay, Signicat discovered that on average, European eID schemes provide 69% of the information that financial institutions need in order to onboard a customer wholly digitally.
Signicat has snagged a second round of funding to further develop its Identity Assurance as a Service toolbox to help plug the gaps, using electronic identity (eID) and digital verification of paper ID, as well as other technologies including registry lookup and facial recognition.
The goal is the creation of a single digital ID market in Europe in which financial service providers can sign up consumers across borders without the customer struggling to assert their identity.
"Cross-border digital ID creates greater choice and convenience for the customer, and opens up new markets for financial institutions” says Gunnar Nordseth, CEO, Signicat. “While eIDAS is a step in the right direction, it does not yet go far enough. Our vision is to integrate eIDs across Europe, making onboarding customers simple for financial institutions and their customers, while still meeting KYC regulations.”