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- ASX-listed Identitii (ID8) is at the vanguard of the financial services regulation revolution with its transaction tracking and reporting simplification technology
- The company’s tech platform, already in use by HSBC and Mastercard, optimises the reporting process for financial services businesses and streamlines their financial crime compliance
- In a new age of tight anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) regulations, ID8’s tech could save banks billions of dollars in non-compliance fines
- At the helm of the Identitii business is CEO John Rayment, with industry veterans like Tim Phillipps, Joe Higginson and Patrick Vu helping drive ID8’s success
- Identitii presents an undervalued opportunity to ASX investors who want to get ahead of the new age of financial regulation technology in the aftermath of recent AUSTRAC fines and the Banking Royal Commission
ASX-listed fintech specialist Identitii (ID8) is at the vanguard of the financial services regulation revolution.
The company’s tech platform, already in use by the likes of HSBC and Mastercard, is designed to streamline and simplify reporting practices for banks and other financial service providers.
The benefit of this tech goes beyond optimised business operations; streamlined transactions and reporting practices mean financial service providers have a deeper understanding of each transaction done by their customers.
On one hand, this means the banks can ensure their services are never being used to facilitate illegal activity. On the other, it helps banks avoid hefty fines from regulators for non-compliance with regulatory standards.
ID8’s unique technology
Identitii’s tech platform is based on the idea that ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) practices are no longer enough to prevent money laundering; banks need to know every transaction, not just every customer.
ID8 CEO John Rayment said one of the biggest challenges faced by the global financial services industry was old tech.
“The technology used to transact with customers is not new, and that means that payment files and records of transactions with customers sit in different locations and, sometimes, in different file formats,” Mr Rayment said.
“It’s really difficult to understand everything that you’ve done with your customers.”
As such, he said, it becomes increasingly difficult for banks to accurately report transactions to local regulators.
Identitii’s tech is designed to mitigate this issue by automating the transaction tracking process. Through ID8’s cloud-based platform, banks have a simple, single view of every transaction conducted with every customer, all in one place.
This means easy access to necessary information, simplified reporting practices, and streamlined financial crime due diligence.
Helping drive this platform alongside Mr Rayment are some industry veterans.
Joe Higginson, ID8’s Chief Commercial Officer, has been a leader in the payments industry for over a decade, having previously held senior roles at Investec Bank, Western Union Business Solutions, and Travelex.
Tim Phillipps, an ID8 Non-Executive Director, is a FinCrime and RegTech expert with over 45 years of experience in the industry.
Meanwhile, Head of Products and Onboarding Patrick Vu has more than 20 years of experience designing, building, and implementing complex payments solutions for businesses in the financial services sector.
A multi-billion-dollar opportunity
Australia’s recent Royal Commission into the banking and financial services sector placed a fresh focus on adherence to anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) regulation, and this has been a theme across the global banking industry.
Governments around the world are demanding stricter reporting practices and enforcing hefty fines for companies that fail to comply.
For example, over the last three years, Australian financial crime regulator AUSTRAC fined two of the Big Four banks $1.3 billion and $700 million, respectively, for AML/CTF failures — the two biggest civil fines issued in the nation’s history.
That’s $2 billion in total, which AUSTRAC CEO Nicole Rose said represented two billion reasons for financial services businesses to improve their compliance systems and processes.
What’s more, regulations are only going to tighten as money becomes more and more digitised and crypto transactions and assets solidify their place in the global financial sector.
“All of these things go together, including the focus from government central banks all around the world in making sure there is a more accurate and complete view of transactions within a financial services business,” Mr Rayment said.
“This all creates quite a significant opportunity for the company.”
Identitii has a front-row seat to the global fintech transformation, and Mr Rayment said the team behind ID8 was “very optimistic” about the future of the company and the opportunities it faced in the financial regulation sector.
With a solution to problems faced by banks in terms of compliance, transaction speed, certainty of movement, and consumer transparency, Identitii presents an undervalued opportunity to ASX investors who want to get ahead of the new age of financial regulation technology in the aftermath of the Banking Royal Commission.
Shares in Identitii currently trade on the ASX for 7.3 cents each in a manageable $15 million market cap.
