Panel: Addressing the Customers' „Pain Points“ - CIAM for Better Security and Compliance

First of all. Hi, Katrina. Good to see you again, like we see all each other, first of all, welcome to all of you. Some of you, we had already in this, in this event, some Melissa joined us for this event. So I would like to all of you to give a short introduction of who you are and what your role is and where you are looking at that topic, pain points as I am, where you're coming from and what you are want to address there today. So the first round, please, first introduction that maybe to start with Melissa. Okay. So I am Melissa Carvallo.

I am the vice president of identity and access management at Royal bank of Canada. Yes, it's Royal bank of Canada, but we're a global organization. So we have 80,000 employees, 16 million customers, and we do the whole gamut of services. So things like banking services, wealth management services, capital markets, investor in treasury services, we offer a wide range of services and we're really fractured. So each of our businesses run identity and access management. And we're trying to really unify that together.

In addition to working for Royal bank of Canada, I'm a volunteer at women in identity. So I forgot to put that in my bio. So I've got this shameless plug wearing the t-shirt here. And so I am the Canadian ambassador of women in identity. And if many people don't know what that is, women in identity, believe in the motto of if the systems are used by everybody, then they should be built by everybody. And we're really looking at breaking down all the biases and making systems available for everyone. So that's a quick introduction to myself.

Thank you very much, Melissa, and quickly show to Katrina. So hi everyone. My name's Katrina down. I'm the founder and CEO of Meco or what we simply like to say the API of me. So not only do we believe that systems should be designed by the people that use them, but we think that we can have a much more equitable digital society when it comes to our identity and our data, if we can fully participate. And one of the things that we see is the convergence from a Siam point of view is the possibility.

Now that there can be trusted credentials that come directly from the customer, portable with the customer, that can do a trusted handshake into a Siam flow or, or with a service integrated in a way where both parties can participate in a way that makes the customer not just central, but also equal and where there could be much greater equity in terms of that service provision or personalization. Okay, great. And over to you Martin again.

Yep, sure. I'm Martin Ingram. I'm a product owner of identity and excess management for Royal bank of Scotland from a customer perspective. I've kind of, I, in some ways I'm conflicted. Part of me is about managing the risk and preventing fraud against the bank. And part of me is how can we build a, a, a far better, far smoother, a lower friction customer journey across that. And it's really bringing those together and balancing the needs of, of both that is, is, is where I see where are going as a bank. Okay.

But, but to start out, what, what do you think is, is the essence where, where should organizations start when protecting their customers, your bank customers, when it comes to, to, to aligning security and, and user experience, what is, what is the, what the feedback that you get from the customers that you are working with? What, what are the main pain points yeah. Really hurts.

And where, where would you like to, to, to really improve? Sure.

I mean, actually the customers are quite conflicted as well because they want it to be easy. They want, you know, be able to, to do stuff. Right. But also one of the, the bits of feedback we get back very often is that they want the bank to keep you safe. And they see the bankers being, you know, a trusted entity and that, you know, if we, sometimes, if we take a journey and we make it too friction free, we would actually get concerns back from the customers because they, they, they can't see, you know, even if we make a smaller hurdle, they can see that there's a hurdle.

There's something that's there to protect them. You know, a warning message, whatever it is. If we struck that back, then they go, oh, I'm not sure I'm, I'm feeling safe in this. So fundamentally we, what we have to do is to, to keep them safe, to make them see that, that we're keeping them safe, but remove unnecessary friction.

And, you know, if you look at typical bank journeys, you know, from the past, it, it isn't like that. We're, we're not particularly secure because there's a reliance on remembered credentials. And we certainly don't make it easy.

You know, you can buy products from, from banks where you're actually providing base information over and over again into systems that should be able to talk to each other. And don't, you can end up doing K YC multiple times until the same organization for different propositions. Whereas actually, you know, the bank should know them and should be able to deal with the trust between propositions.

So, you know, as we look to that past the future has to be very different. Okay. Would you agree Melissa, to what Martin said, that there could even be less security or perceived security when you remove hurdles that are no longer required? I agree.

You know, if I look at just the recent last number of months and COVID 19 in the pandemic, there are a number of things that our customers are raising or complaining about. One of the things is when we initially created an account, we, you had to go into a branch.

Well, you can't go into a branch now. So verifying and proofing an identity has some, has moved to the forefront and doing it digitally. Another problem we're having is when you wanted to transact over a certain limit, he would go into a branch. And now we have to do that digitally online. And so having multifactor authentication and being able to step up is another complaint. And it's looking at that experience for many of our customers and the diversity of many of our customers. Canada's a very big area. And so they're not able to easily just get some of the technology.

The internet is not necessarily as high speed. So we have a lot of customer challenges or complaints that they've raised that we struggle with. And we've built a lot of our solutions. So that's another problem that we have. We haven't bought them. And so solutions like what Katrina mentioned would help us greatly accelerate our digital experience and journeys. Okay. Katrina you're nodding already. So where could, what could be improved here to, to on the one hand, improve the identification process, but also these step up authentication that cannot be done in person anymore.

So I'm nodding for a number of reasons. So, so first of all, I think the, what the bank could do and, and, and really it's any trusted entity is more transparency.

You know, I, I don't know if others have had this experience over the last few months while when everything's moved digital, the services you really want are the ones that get turned off because it, look, they look like they're fraudulent. Like you're not supposed to be in that place. And the things that you really wanna turn off, you can't seem to turn off because you have to go into a branch to do something or whatever.

So, so we've, we've had this kind of craziness over the last few months, which really brings me to, I think the key point is that in March and April, I think a lot of people were talking about returning to normal when we return to normal. I think what we've heard may in June is that there, there isn't gonna be a normal now yet like pets on screen kids, doorbells, you know, we're getting Telephones even, you know, This is the new normal, and that, that was perfectly time. That Actually, how did you do that?

We, we need to design for a different way of being connected, which actually is much more intimate. And so for me, what's crazy is how do you think that you can manage trust and intimacy without making the customer actually an equal part of, of the relationship? Yeah.

So I think this issue of, of sort of hierarchies or customer at the end of a journey over the last decade, we've talked about customer centric, but I think what we've gotta now start to look at is, is, is customer of partner, because then what happens is we can start to deal with this new level of digital intimacy, where we're actually looking into each other's homes every day, whether or not it's in, in whether or not it's because the, the way we work or whether it's, because I'm, I wanna talk to my bank manager now.

And it may be the only way that I, that I can do that looking into her home, her looking into mine. And so we are removing a lot of these barriers that, that sort of create this peer to peer relationship. But I think what we've gotta think now is the way we really design our processes and our, and our technology platforms and systems to act more like peers. And I think, I think we need to move from customer centric to, to customer partnership. If we wanna speed this up. Right. Martin would, would you agree?

Or how does it look like if I want to, if I want to create an account with your bank right now, and I cannot go to, to any of the, of the branches, how does this look like? And how does can that reflect what, what Katrina said, Where we're on the way, you know, we do do things like document scanning and things, but for account opening, but, you know, fundamentally that that's a, it's a Mo the presentation in branch model has been something that's been breaking over the last few years.

You know, the number of times I get asked to present a utility bill, really a physical utility bill. When did I last too one of those? Cause they want me to, you know, take us a photograph webpage. It just doesn't work. So we need to find better ways to do it. The tech technology is, you know, getting there for that and clearly is the way forward, long term.

You know, as I mentioned in my presentation earlier, I, I think this is something that the digital identity serves because it, it, it provides a way to move credentials around between different users. And I, and I think that's pretty much in common with where you are as well, Katrina is that we need to start aligning the user with credentials that help support their lives. Yeah. I think another important point that Katrina raised in, I think maybe it was in the session earlier is that you have that journey or the experience.

And so I can't only think that the only identity my customer will have is with my bank. They're out shopping, they're out other dealing with another credit card company. And so it's giving the customer their identity back and allowing them to use it in multiple places, instead of forcing them to hold many tokens and many devices, we just need to make it easier for the customer. Yeah.

And what we're starting to see is it actually, ironically it creates new B2B opportunities that never existed before whether or not that's bank collaborating or a retailer that a bank would never collaborate with because that retailer is maybe in another physical location, meaning another country or offers only an online service. And then what, what you start to have is this blending between the physical world and the digital world, where all of a sudden this, this idea of either customization, personalization, or concierge, where multiple actors can come together to solve a problem.

And, and you know, for me, the classic one is you think you might want to buy, you know, a property to live in, you know, your first home and you are having a family or, or you're buying that as an investment. And you, and you know, all the things that will go along with, you know, whether or not that's mortgage insurance or house insurance or, or renovation or all of those.

And, and when you think of it from the customer's point of view, all of those things have a financial touch point, but you do every one of those as if they are a siloed experience. When in fact the bank wants to know if you're using a license builder and the builder wants to know that you can pay the bills.

And the, the builder wants to know that the site is insured. And when you start to think about those things for you and I, that's a single experience yeah. That buying and moving into our new home.

But, but it doesn't, we don't, we don't have that connected experience in what, in a way we're served. And I think there's a huge opportunity there.

I, I completely agree. I, the way I, I think about it, the way I express to people is it is the broader customer journey.

You know, the customers, not after they don't want loan, they want a car, or they want a mortgage, they want a house. And it's part of a whole broader, broader ask. And we've gotta start thinking in terms of that, that broader journey, because otherwise what we're doing is we're only creating fractures, but elsewhere. Yeah. But it offers a new, sorry. It offers a new viewpoint because you have to think about the weakest link in linking identities.

So if a customer or group out there service, that's providing just takes paper, knowledge based information, and then we link to them, then we're almost bringing that security risk into our own organization. So there's a lot to think about when we partner with each other. Yeah.

I mean, one of the things that I'm, I'm looking to is that we end up with a very wide range of credential issuers. And so they all start to issue against a common identity.

But, you know, at that point, if you can see, you know, there's a, a tax record from the tax office, there's a, a passport that's from another chunk of government, you know, things from banks, things from mortgage issuers, you know, car loans, whatever it starts to tie tie together and allow you to triangulate on the customer. And, and I think that's what we've been really excited about with this work that we've been doing with open ID connect, it's really early days, but the presentation can actually be a combination of those credentials.

So it might be, I actually don't need a tax record for this service, but I would trust this credential if it was accompanied by a tax record, or I do need a tax record, but because I can't see you face to face, if you had two other credentials that were like this, it would negate the reason for you to come into branch. And so I think, I think that's also a really exciting part of what's possible. And I think back to, to, to your point Martin, around, you know, all of these credential providers, I think this is why the standards work is so important.

And I also think, and we see this, I know this is happening in Canada. And, and we see this in different parts of the world where you have healthy collaboration between government authority and financial sector or telecommunications, where they recognize that it's a zero sum game, if everyone's just trying to win on their own. But the idea that, that through that collaboration, you can make a better experience. I think that's where they're the markets where we're gonna see the, some of these problems solved really fast.

And, and with, with, with positive outcomes that don't have to trade off privacy or data control from the, from the individual's perspective. Yeah. I think that's key cuz you know, it's all about trust. If we're looking for users to bring and consolidate identity data together, if we lose that trust, then we will have nothing. The users will just choose something else. Yeah. Okay.

We, we have just a few seconds left of, if I am ask the three of you just I've learned standardization, I've learned collaboration, reducing identities, relying on existing identities and trusting them across what would be recommendations where else we could look at for improving the situation. If I just give you 32nd seconds each starting with Melissa, then Katrina, then Martin. I really think it's just the focus on collaboration and trust with each other.

If we all partner together and learn from each other, I think we're gonna make it better instead of trying to individually solve this on our own. I think if you have a million customers, 500 customers, 10 million customers, you have 10 million opportunities to create new opportunity. If you think of the customer as the integration point and that vector where that trust can actually be brokered. And I think it's a, it's a shift in mindset, but it's incredibly powerful when you begin to think in those terms. Great. Thank you Martin. Yeah.

And I, I suppose I'm gonna go against the street a bit here, standardization. I, I, I love it and I hate it. Yeah.

I, I think that ultimately we will end up with standards on what we do with identities and how we pass them around, you know, and credentials. The, the challenge that we have is that if we rely on standards before we get to market with this stuff, we'll wait for the standards bodies forever. And so I think we're gonna be end up doing some, maybe it ends up tactical. Maybe it ends up defacto standard. Yeah. Yeah. Really might be two, two names for the same thing. Yeah. We're gonna end up Great. Thank you very much. Thank you.

The three of, of you that was of course a great panel together with you. Again, looking forward to meeting you again to talking to you again. Thanks again, Martin. Thanks again, Melissa. Thanks again, Katrina. Thanks you. Thank you. Thank you. Take care.