According to the United States Federal Trade Commission, 1.4 million cases of identity theft were reported in the U.S. in 2021, representing a 113% increase from the previous year. Turns out the most common age group for identity theft victims in 2021 was 30 to 39 years old, and consumers spent 16 hours on average to dispute charges on fake accounts, according to industry research group Javelin.
Fraud is ever present
We all know how widespread fraud is. Fraudsters regularly get access to personal information through various methods, including phishing scams, hacking, stealing mail or trash, or simply purchasing information from other criminals.
One common use case is when a fraudster obtains a victim’s personal information – then applies for a loan in the victim’s name. They may use lots of different months, including online applications, phone applications, or even visit banks or other lenders in person in an attempt to secure that loan.
Introducing Video Verify
With all this in mind, Eltropy last week – while at the CUNA GAC 2023 conference in Washington, D.C. – announced the launch of “Video Verify.”
Video Verify allows credit unions and community banks to remotely verify the identity of their members before opening accounts, issuing credit cards, authorizing wire transfers, granting loans and other high value-high fraud risk activities.
With Video Verify, CFIs will have an easy-to-use, yet full-featured and robust solution for verifying identity, without having to ask members or customers to visit their branch in person. Video Verify combines remote video, real-time government ID verification, and knowledge-based authentication, ensuring members’ identities are fully authenticated and secure.
“We’re extremely excited to launch Video Verify and help community financial institutions everywhere improve this increasingly vital need for modern, identity verification processes,” said Jed Taylor, Chief Product Officer, Eltropy. “With the increasing incidence of identity theft and fraud, it’s critical that credit unions large and small adopt secure and effective ID methods to protect their members’ identities and their businesses.”
Part of the full digital conversations platform
Video Verify is a capability of Eltropy’s Digital Conversations Platform, which also includes Texting, Chat, Video Banking and Appointment Management solutions, enabling credit unions and community banks to easily communicate and verify their members with Video Verify.
In addition, Eltropy also provides a one-time passcode (OTP) solution that allows CFIs to implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) to further secure their authentication processes without compromising their members’ user experience.
Credit unions can better avoid fraud
With these strong MFA and identity theft prevention measures in place, credit unions and community banks can make sure that phishing scams don’t lead to major losses and inconvenience for their members and customers.
“When we started getting callers trying to impersonate members, we realized the fraudsters were evolving their methods,” said Shelly Butler, Chief Operations Officer at Fibre Federal Credit Union, based in Longview, Wash. “What Eltropy has brought us is an automated, one-time passcode (OTP), real-time authentication and document exchanges with members as well as for collection notifications, that have helped us stop the fraudsters — as we now quickly know with confidence when our agents are actually speaking to a member.”
Credit unions and community banks can learn more about Video Verify by visiting Eltropy’s website or contacting the sales team at team@eltropy.com.
