UK’s Good Practice Guide Encourages Competition in Identity Industry: Yoti

Yoti is calling attention to a couple of the key changes in the United Kingdom’s Good Practice Guide (GPG) for identity verification. The company previously discussed GPG 45 back in April, and is now issuing a reminder to explain its implications for British businesses and civilians.

In that regard, Yoti once again noted that GPG 45 breaks down the identity verification process into five key steps. To verify someone’s identity, organizations must first get evidence of the identity being claimed, and then verify that the evidence is legitimate. Examples include official government documents like passports and driver’s licenses, which still need to be analyzed to make sure they are not forgeries.

After that, the organization must check the person’s history to make sure they have existed over time, and that the name is not associated with a high risk of fraud. Finally, the organization must confirm that the identity matches that of the person completing the verification process, typically with some form of liveness detection.

According to Yoti, those five steps are noteworthy because they give private organizations a template to follow if they want to offer their own identity verification services. As it stands, the five steps are used to create identity profiles, which have historically been the purview of the British government. Under GPG 45, organizations that are able to provide a high enough level of confidence at each of the five steps will have the opportunity to operate their own independent identity schemes without relying on the government for their profiles.

The GPG also gives organizations more ways to achieve that confidence threshold. As a result, the document creates a more competitive environment in the identity industry, which should in turn lead to the development of better identity technologies for individual consumers.

The British government has previously listed Yoti as an approved vendor of identity technology, while Yoti has praised the government for its privacy-first digital identity policies. However, Yoti has also argued that the government should be more proactive with regards to self-serve identity verification options.

–

November 16, 2020 – by Eric Weiss