# #15: Safeguarding Digital Finance

**27th March 2024**  
**With:**  
| Ivan Mortimer-Schutts (SIMBAS)  
| David Rennie (IDEMIA)

In Session #15, **Ivan Mortimer-Schutts** (SIMBAS) and **David Rennie** (IDEMIA) join FNA to discuss the critical convergence of **Digital Identity (ID)** and **Financial Integrity**. As finance moves into a purely digital, non-face-to-face environment, the traditional methods of verifying a customer—often slow and paper-based—are becoming the primary "weak links" that fraudsters exploit.

The discussion centers on the role of **Augmented Identity** and **tokenized credentials** in creating a "trust layer" for payments. Our guests explore how financial institutions can move beyond siloed AML and fraud departments toward an integrated "Data-Centric" model. By leveraging biometrics and cloud-native digital ID platforms, banks can achieve "frictionless" onboarding that satisfies G20 inclusion goals while simultaneously hardening defenses against synthetic identity fraud and money laundering.

**Key Discussion Points:**

- **The Identity Nexus:** Why digital ID is the "missing link" that connects Anti-Money Laundering (AML) with real-time fraud prevention.

- **Frictionless Inclusion:** How IDEMIA’s digital-first services enable unbanked populations to verify their identities remotely, accelerating entry into the formal economy.

- **The SIMBAS Approach:** Insights into white-label, API-native digital banking solutions that allow smaller banks to deploy "government-grade" security without massive capital expenditure.

- **Privacy by Design:** Navigating the tension between data analytics and consumer privacy rights (e.g., GDPR) through the use of zero-knowledge proofs and secure tokenization.

- **Countering Synthetic Fraud:** Using behavioral biometrics and "Liveness Detection" to ensure the person behind the screen is a real human, not a deepfake or a bot.

- **Global Regulatory Harmony:** Discussing the need for cross-border standards in digital ID to enable secure, interoperable international payments.

**Watch on Demand:**

Listen on: [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7zJbvQCj4SFX9eM7pccg00?si=ulToSNJdTOuU7iMBf3wjAw) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/payment-systems-broadcast-15-safeguarding-digital-finance/id1772649634?i=1000675316981) | [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/93293cc8-fa9c-41a8-a3d7-86b413d78941/episodes/bea25066-e805-42c3-a5ec-836cccc212e2/fna-broadcasts-payment-systems-broadcast-15---safeguarding-digital-finance)