Newsletter 6B - Identity Verification, Big Tech Identity and Gartner

A refresh of market segments based on Gartner 2023 Identity Verification report

Dr Alan Mayo

Oct 27, 2023

Hi trendsetters,

This newsletter

updates some key market segment terminology and
suggests a Gartner report to read.

Identity Verification and Big Tech Identity

The main terminology that I want to change is the market segment that I previously called KYC (Know Your Customer). This market segment uses a number of techniques, such as identity proofing and biometric matching, to verify the identity of a person to a new third party such as a lawyer, accountant, or real estate agent. It has huge volume worldwide and is probably one of the few market segments making any money!

But, as Gartner’s insightful 2023 report rightly points out:

KYC is an ongoing process that is greater than a single identity verification transaction as institutions need to monitor the status of identities over time,
The need to verify identity is more than just KYC and this need is increasing as organizations want to be sure who their customer really is.

Besides these useful observations, Gartner also changed their naming of the segment from ‘Identity Proofing and Affirmation’ to – wait for it – ‘Identity Verification’. I love it – it actually states what the process does. And so I have updated my Newsletter 6 – Market Segments’ diagram accordingly:

You will note that I have also:

Changed ‘Social Media Identity’ to ‘Big Tech Identity’. Why? Well, the federated identity options that Meta, Google, and Apple previously provided to support social media level security are being supplanted by the passkey initiative that aims to deliver better security and ease of use. How this plays out will be a subject of a future newsletter, but the with Microsoft, Apple, and Google leading this passkey initiative, Big Tech may well play a major part in the future of Identity.
Reordered the segments on the left (in the blue shading) to allow me to highlight the segments where we find the most commercial activity not dominated by Big Tech, and I have provided a list of the major international companies in this space:

Identity and Access Management

Okta
Thoma Bravo’s Ping, ForgeRock, and SailPoint

Identity Verification

Jumio (USA)
Mitek (USA)
LexisNexis Risk Solutions (USA)
Trulioo (Canada)
Onfido (UK)
GB Group (UK)
IDnow (Germany)
IDEMIA (France)
Sumsub (Cyprus)

Identity Hubs

ID.me (USA)
Yoti (UK)
Digi.me (UK)

I also want to highlight that Identity Hubs have taken the seemingly obvious step of remembering an identity that they have verified and reusing it. Hence, they could be considered to be Identity Verification companies, but my reading is that they have changed their strategies and no longer focus on providing Identity Verification services.

2023 Gartner Report

I do recommend the Gartner paper which is available through many companies that are named in the report, including Jumio. It is a lot easier to read than the 2022 report that has a huge amount of detail and a veritable cure for insomnia if you choose to go there.

The report suggest that the Identity Verification market will decrease as Digital Wallet solutions come online! That bucks the trend of every other report that I have read that suggests continuous growth. Maybe, just maybe, some realism is creeping in!

All the best and watch out for my upcoming Digital Wallet newsletter.

Regards

Alan