Online Identity Verification With CSDI’s E-KYC CIGS

Central Securities Depository of Iran Posted

Today’s consumer demands a fully digital experience – available online and on mobile.

The ability to verify a user’s identity online without the need for in-person Identity verification speeds up customer acquisition, reduces customer abandonment, and drives growth.

Digital customer acquisition and onboarding is becoming increasingly important to financial institutions in response to changing consumer preferences.

Historically, digital onboarding presented a two-fold challenge; achieving adequate risk and compliance objectives while ensuring a low-friction customer experience. This was particularly difficult for the mobile use case because of the small screen size and difficulty associated with manual data entry. Recent hardware and software advancements, however, have turned what was once a mobile liability into a strength.

In this report, CSDI offers its considerations for applying an appropriate digital identity verification platform.

Created by Central Securities Depository of Iran, the e-KYC Comprehensive Information Gathering System (CIGS), strives to change the way authentication takes place, making it more secure and convenient online rather than in-person.

In order to improve the situation and make online identity authentication more secure, the CSDI has created a series of interoperable technical standards that facilitate the creation of secure and fast identity verification experiences in collaboration with an Iranian application named “Signal”.

How does it work?

When users register on the Comprehensive Information Gathering System or CIGS, they are then required to have their identities verified.

They have two options; they are either prompted to verify their identities in-person. Here they have to refer to select branches of banks including Parsian, Shahr, Saderat, Sepah, Keshavarzi banks and Melal Credit Institution, brokerage firms or government electronic service offices.

For those applicants who choose to have their identities verified in-person, the CSDI has provided a special service in collaboration with Iranian designed and made traffic app to help them find the closest brokerage firm, get driving directions and a live traffic map.

The second group decides to choose online verification method. In order to authenticate a user’s identity this way, the customer’s device must be connected to the internet to perform the verification. In fact, the customer should first download and install an app namely Signal, or refer to the official websites of “Mehra Iran Bank”, “Sahm Ashena” and “Karamad” brokerage firm.

At the beginning, as one of the options, they can see two sections related to CIGS. One of them is used as an FAQ page. The other is used for registering on the system and specifically available for online identity verification of those customers who have already registered onto the system.

The customer selects the second the option and primarily registers on the CIGS.

If they have already registered, then they directly go to have their identities verified.

Now they are required to enter their national ID number together with their tracking code plus a security code.

Then they are required to pay for the service.

In the next step, the applicant is required to enter the number on the back of the national ID card.

No the customers are required to take an appropriate selfie in which their faces are quite clear, visible and identifiable.

In the next step, the applicant is required to read a sentence provided by the system and record a video in 25 seconds.

Now the customer is required to review the information given to the system and submit the information.

In the end, the customers are informed that the information will be verified and that they will notified of the result later via an SMS.

If the result of the verification is a success, an SMS will be sent to the applicant that the related trading code will be sent to them in a week. If the verification fails, the customer will also be informed and they have to repeat the procedures or have their identities verified in person via banks, brokerage firms or government electronic services offices.