Enabling Digital Identity Ecosystems

Thank you very much for, for joining and super excited to be here. My name is Jonas Ramel. I work at bank ID in Sweden, the original, we, we say there are other services called bank ID in the world that we realizing.

But yeah, so, and my responsibility in bank ID is that I work with expansion into new markets. I'll talk a little bit about the ecosystem in Sweden and, and what we have done there.

And yeah, it is, you can say from, from that perspective that, you know, in Sweden, we live in sort of that digital society of tomorrow already today, and, and that it exists. Of course it's been a journey, but today SW use your digital identity in everyday life, in all different types of, of services. When it comes to like transportation, you know, eHealth all these different areas of entertainment and of course, in financial services and banking, and I'll come back to that.

And, and of course the, the sort of cornerstone in digitalizing that society is having a trusted identity that we provide the bank ID. So essentially we, we, we have an app for the user where the ID is stored and it can be used in this common network throughout different parts. So we provide both their ID and the platform to our customers, which are the banks who are issuing it. And I'll come back to that bit later. We just a few words about us as a company.

Well, we are, we are Swedish based out of Stockholm. We are a tech company, you know, being around, I guess we are sort of pioneers in, in the space, been around for 20 years. So 20 years anniversary this year. So I'm looking forward to that party. And yeah, this is basically the, the brag slide that we have about our company, but of course, a few things the pandemic really, you know, also pushed Sweden into using digital services even further. So last year we had like over 6 billion transactions, but that has also continued. So we're targeting 7 billion transactions actually for 2022. Yeah.

One other thing is that our latest end user survey came back at NPS of, of 79, which we are of course proud about, but also humble to sort of really stay on that level. And it shows all the hard work that, that goes into to creating a great service. But of course this all didn't just happen over overnight. As I've said, we started back in the early two thousands and, and back then we, we launched of ID on, on card, but then in 2007, someone launched a proper smartphone.

And then three years later we introduced the mobile bank ID, which is then the predominantly used service today that you have your ID on your mobile phone. We still have cards, but that that's for really special use cases that is basically not used today.

So yeah, we, we, we really excelled, I mean, think we, we are on our fourth generation on our software platform and today, you know, we, we have like 90% of Swedish adults uses our service on a daily basis. So like the average suite is using it like five times per day.

So yeah, it, it, it's, it's been a Aing journey. We, as a company has had to focus on Sweden alone up until last year where we changed the strategy to also then starting to explore possibilities outside of Sweden. And really, you know, what we are about there is to find different types of partnerships. You know, we have like the gain initiative here and I'll be on the panel later, but that's what we're looking for. We are not like a company that, okay, we have a M and a strategy of getting out into Europe, but we wanna partner up.

We think we have a great service, great knowhow that we can leverage. We want be part of building more ecosystems in, in the, in the future. So that's just introduction of our company a little bit about our history as a company, and also strategy around that looking then to, to the ecosystem. And I think as, as I mentioned, like we are in all different parts and, and when we started, of course there was, you know, a lot of collaboration, both public and private. I think that was the key success also.

So we, we do have, you know, all the public services connected, but if you look at the ecosystem today, 5% of the business is through public services. And, you know, so financial services is the largest we were early on since banks, it's the customers getting banks to use the service, I think is also a key thing. And it is still the majority, the biggest industry is used there, but today I think our growth comes from other industries.

So we, we covered that. And, and now we see other industries like transportation eHealth, as I mentioned, it's been growing several hundred percent, of course, with the COVID. And then I, I don't mean like, you know, you know, COVID download your COVID path in, in eHealth, in Sweden, you, you use for, you know, having your online meeting with your doctor, you know, getting access to journals your, your, the, and all of that. And of course now past pandemic that has come down a little bit, because time to time, you actually do need to see a doctor, but I guess we will also remove that soon.

That's the suite. But I think these type of services is, is, is really growing. And what I, when I joined bank ID, I thought it was like amazing that we have 5,000 plus different services, service providers connected, but we're soon closing into 6,000. So we are at the pace of hundred new service providers per month adding. And of course that means that we have a stable system, you know, we have a smooth way of onboarding them and, and stable APIs, automated process and all of that. So I think that that's really sort of seeing that we are still evolving.

The ecosystem is still sort of maturing in there. Yeah.

For us, I think I'll come back a little bit to the ecosystem, but for us, I mean, this is nothing that we just take for granted that, okay. You know, we, we, we built it now, it's there, you know, relax it it's, it's continuous work and continues improvements in all different areas of the life cycle O of a digital entity.

So, so this is like relentless work from the team, you know, all the way from securing the onboarding, a lot of new feature functionalities that, that we release in there to be doing remote onboarding in a secure way and, and all of these things. And it all comes back to, I mean, if, if this doesn't work, you lose trust. If we don't have trust, we don't have anything basically. So I think that, you know, a lot of the, the user experience pieces here is crucial.

Of course, it disservice has to be easy to use you, you should be able to do the right thing. We work a lot around that, but it's also, you know, security comes first in, in, in all different aspects. And I'll come back to that a little bit. So we are continuously working with these different areas. And I think a flip side to digital society is of course, Sweden today is a cashless society.

You know, basically we don't use cash. Okay.

We are in, in, in, you know, public, the, the, we, we still have cash. So I think it's the best. We haven't abandoned that, that politically step, but in reality, no sweet uses cash for me coming here after pandemic. It's my first event outside of Sweden.

It's like, okay, actually need to find an ATM. It's it?

You, you get so used to, to, to not being there. But the flip side of that is of course, when you, when there's no need for anyone to Rob a bank, because there's no money there, they move online. Of course. So a lot of the effort that goes into sort of extending our capabilities and the platform is around risk and fraud. And of course this is some super, super important. And today the system automatically detects and prevents thousand of fraud, thousands of fraud attempt each month. And of course, that's just the beginning.

You know, it, it is something that continues to grow. And I guess this, this is shown and seen all over the world, but I think, you know, when you see it and, and in a society where you use digital identities for, for everything, all payments and no cash, of course, that is something that is really crucial. So if I then in, in looking at the ecosystem, we have all the different parts, you know, like the end users, we have the ID providers and the service providers. So of course it is to create the common trust in this. And it needs to be maintained as I mentioned.

And, and that's where, where we come in and that's the hard work we're putting in there. So, I mean, starting off from the users, of course, here we work both from, from, you know, usability. We talked about that.

And, and many times when I'm out meeting people, it's like, you know, they'll talk about, ah, but user experience has to be frictionless, frictionless user experience. Yes. User experience is super important, but you cannot always, I think I, I heard someone speak here earlier also that say, well, you know what user experience versus security and the answer is super simple for us. It's always security first, but we have managed to also have a service that scored high and from user experience.

But again, a lot of hard work there with user groups because we have the HPA, of course, the different use groups that goes from, from sort of young adults to, to, to up to 75 or even above. And of course that's a lot of work to, to include them all in, in that. And of course, we also coming back to that, that now we have had a, a really good user experience, but we also have to introduce things where, where the system will detect that a transaction has a higher risk.

We want, we want the system to automatically then ask the user, prompt the user for doing steps, like, for example, scanning your password or a national ID card. And of course that comes back to again, keeping trust, keeping security at the priority. And of course that does not mean like a frictionless from that sense. So a lot of work goes in there then of course, banks is our customers. They are the ID providers. And I think that a key thing here that many talk about is that, well, we have a common schema here. Yes.

There is a common scheme and many times when I also talk to people outside of Sweden's like, yeah, but we, we have problems getting banks to agree on this. And we under, we understand that that is a challenge. And I think that, but I also think there is a possibility of doing it. And I'll let you in on a secret right now.

Yes, this is a common framework and it's super, important's the key, but there are also differences. It's always, that needs to be exceptions in there. But so when you dig into the details, there are actually things that are different between the banks, but the overall common has to be there for this to be able to be used throughout the society.

So, and also banks, of course, also we work a lot on different levels in the banks. You need to work with, you know, the compliance people with the security people, with the user experience, people, the digital experience. So a lot of effort goes into, we have different types of forums to so help them because of course there is a great experience and knowhow in, in Swedish banks about digital identity, but it's not core product.

You know, things are moving, you know, we talk about regulations, standardization, new technologies. So it's also there.

We need, we need to be help and, and support them in that. So it's really a, a, a collaboration that, that needs to get done Five minutes. Then we have like the service providers and, and of course, you know, you need the service providers that loves you and, and we have tons of them, but also they want to be part of this. They also want to be, you know, part of the ecosystem and influence, and they are very demanding and they should be. So also here, it's, it's quite demanding to, to sort of, you know, work with them to help them.

Of course, we, we work a lot with how we introduce new feature functionalities and, and supporting them technically. But one thing that I, I wanted to to say here is that also, you know, when we look at these different types of players here, I want to also lift up system integrators. I think they have had a key role in, in leveraging this, because again, I think this is part of the success here is that we are good at what we do. We are not system integrators and, and the, but we have 25, 30 system integrators in Sweden and they of course built up their businesses.

You know, they also move into other areas, which is great to see. And without those, I don't think sort of, we, we would've helped them today. We are in a mature world here. So 90% of the service providers, they, they integrate directly. But without those system integrators that have sort of been part of this journey, I don't think the ecosystem would've been where it is. I wanna make sure that we have opportunity for people to ask questions. Oh yeah. Okay.

Both online and that, so take a few minutes and then folks can so online and here, if you can get your questions ready or on the tablet, that'd be Great. Yeah.

So yes, happy up that. I think we are, you know, continuously working with all these different groups, interacting, trying to help them and really growing the ecosystem. And I think from that, we, we have learned a lot.

And again, that's, as I said, that's why we're here. We want to join different types of partnerships and yeah, with that, I'll leave it with that, I think to interest of time.

And, and if there is any questions, thank you very much for listening.