Wearables will help with KYC: know your customer

Date: 19 May 2016

Citywealth

Alexander Makeyenkov, senior vice president at tech consulting firm DataArt, also says banks continue to be conservative in their approach to spending on technology.

How can the corporate sector benefit from wearables?

Know your customer (KYC), the process businesses use to verify the identity of their clients, can be enhanced by connecting to their wearable device. This, however, throws up some new questions for the banks, such as what to do with this information and how to update privacy policies. From payment transactions to wealth management investment, every part of the business could benefit from getting a better understanding of their customer. Internally in banks there have also been some pilot projects in which wearables monitor stress levels by pulse and pattern recognition to prevent traders from taking investment decisions at times of stress. This type of monitoring tech could also work for car drivers, in which wearables would monitor sobriety or tiredness to prevent accidents.

What are the big investment trends in financial services?

Digital transformation is on all banking board agendas. For example, last year the Italian bank UniCredit said they are investing €1.2bn into their retail arm because they estimate that over ninety percent of transactions will be carried out through remote channels by 2018.

How can banking operations use wearables to attract clients?

Banks are still very conservative organisations and most of the innovative products they are looking at are in the prototype or proof-of-concept phase. One example is a prototype of an app that is not yet released, which tracks calories spent throughout the week and converts the number to a monetary equivalent, which then goes into a special saving account in a bank. This “health money‚Äù is then used with good rates through partner sport retail shops. The app also gives the bank promotional benefits, such as establishing a footprint on their clients mobile or wearable devices which give behavioural and social profiles, for marketing purposes.

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