Navigating the Future of Identity: AI, Trust, and Seamless Onboarding with Zac Cohen, Chief Product Officer at Trulioo

In this episode of Banking on Information, Zac Cohen, Chief Product Officer at Trulioo, discusses the importance of digital identity verification in today's fast-paced, technology-driven world. He explains how Trulioo enables fintechs and other businesses to onboard customers securely and compliantly, while also addressing the evolving landscape of identity verification and the impact of AI on the future of this field. The conversation highlights the significance of customer experience, the challenges of fraud prevention, and the need for innovative solutions in a digital-first environment.

Keywords

Trulioo, digital identity, onboarding, fintech, AI, customer experience, identity verification, fraud prevention, technology, innovation

Takeaways

• Zac Cohen emphasizes the importance of working in a challenging environment.
  
  
• Trulioo's platform helps businesses onboard customers securely and compliantly.
  
  
• The rise of micro merchants is changing the landscape of identity verification.
  
  
• Customer experience is crucial for businesses competing in the digital space.
  
  
• AI is transforming identity verification, presenting both opportunities and challenges.
  
  
• Frictionless onboarding is key to retaining customers.
  
  
• The future of identity verification will involve AI agents acting on behalf of users.
  
  
• A layered approach to identity solutions is essential for security and compliance.
  
  
• Trulioo's orchestration engine allows for low code, no code workflow building.
  
  
• The conversation encourages curiosity and innovation in the field of digital identity.
  
  

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Zach Cohen and His Role
02:13 Understanding Trulioo's Mission and Use Cases
05:35 Customer Value and Experience in Identity Verification
08:44 Future of Identity Verification and AI's Role

Transcript

Rutger van Faassen (00:01.456)
Hello and welcome to another episode of Banking on Information. Today my guest is Zac Cohen, who is Chief Product Officer at Trulioo U. Welcome to the podcast, Zac

Lauren K (00:13.038)
Hey, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Rutger van Faassen (00:15.896)
Now, as always, we start with that very important question, which is, why do you do what you do, Zac?

Lauren K (00:23.566)
Yeah. Listen, for me, it's a pretty clear Venn diagram. I think that's the easiest way to think about it and talk about it. So we have this market, we have some interactions, and then I'll give a little insight into personal. And so on the market side, listen, I think everybody wants to be working in a challenging environment with a versatile problem to solve. But what's super cool about why

I what I do is that the velocity of change and the meaningful positive value to society in terms of the work that I do is extensive. It's large. And so for me, those are really the important things of just making sure that you're constantly waking up every day and excited to do what you do. And it's really because of those four aspects. When it comes to interactions, listen, when you get to interact with customers,

and market actors that I have the opportunity to work with. It's a very special thing. I get to interact with daily some of the largest businesses in the world, the people on the forefront of innovation, but also people that have a similar journey and a similar passion around solving a super critical challenge that we have in the world that all of us as people experience with today. And then think the last thing, listen, as a personal, I've always loved getting a full view of a business, even

Rutger van Faassen (01:38.352)
Yep. Yep.

Lauren K (01:46.648)
you know, going back to my high school days, working in coffee shops or gas stations. Like I always want to know like where do the beans come from or, you know, how do we make money here and those kinds of things. So having started at, Trulioo, when we were just 15 people as the general manager and then sort of over time, just influencing and working across all areas of the business. I mean, that's why a lot of us get in tech, but what's, what's cool then really being involved in learning how technology evolves, how it gets built and getting it all facets of the business. So

That's sort of why I do what I do.

Rutger van Faassen (02:18.533)
That's very cool. So you want to go down to rabbit hole, figure out how things work to then help other people solve their problems in a challenging environment that constantly challenges you.

Lauren K (02:31.916)
There you go, that's it, in a nutshell. And I think when you link to a Trulioo's place in the world is, right? I mean, fundamentally, we are a global identity platform that's solving the challenges of digital verification and onboarding, trust and safety, fraud prevention. I mean, it really lines up to sort of who I am as an individual and the things that excite me every day

Rutger van Faassen (02:55.694)
Yeah, yeah, no, you certainly picked an area where there is constant change and constant challenge for you. So that fits very nicely with your why. Now let's talk a little bit about what Trulioo does. What is kind of your number one use case that you solve for?

Lauren K (03:09.678)
Yeah, listen, in the simplest form, we enable fintechs, payments companies and marketplaces to onboard their customers, compliantly, securely and without friction anywhere in the world. So an easy example of this is let's suppose you want to open up a bank account tomorrow with a a NEO bank. So they have a compliance and regulatory obligation to verify that you are who you say you are. But simultaneously, right, they want to make sure that they're protecting against fraud and they create a seamless user experience.

So with our identity platform, you can achieve all of this and more in any country by verifying individuals using data, documents, digital IDs, which is sort of the latest frontier. You can verify businesses by getting their company vitals, downloading the documents, understanding their ownership structure. And then we underpin all of this with an orchestration engine that lets you do low code, no code workflow building, as well as

fraud intelligence services to ensure that you're onboarding the right people and getting rid of the bad. So that's sort of the broader use case that we service. And I think the other interesting thing that we're seeing today that's typical to a lot of your listeners and a lot of your customer base and ecosystem is the change between the evolution of like, it used to be always people doing the onboarding. And now, we have this rise of the micro merchant, small businesses, sole props. So everybody who wants to

you make a delivery or sell something online. The use cases are really shifting towards this business driver that's creating a lot of new different use cases as part of all like a holistic identity onboarding flow. So a lot of interesting stuff in the use cases we see today.

Rutger van Faassen (04:54.125)
Yeah, and as the world gets more more digital, we can't just look each other in the eye and sort of say, hey, are you truly who you say you are? And can I validate that? Can I look at your document right here? You're doing that digitally, right? Because everything is going digital.

Lauren K (05:08.814)
Absolutely. The digital expansion that we've seen over the last 10 years, I mean, you just have to look at how many things you do every day that's in a digital component. But it's all, that actually has gone full circle and translated back to our physical world. So if you want to jump in a car share, if you want to order something online, there's also that physical interaction through the app that is in real time also doing a lot of these identity and behavioral checks to make sure that we're creating a safe environment.

Rutger van Faassen (05:23.587)
Okay.

Rutger van Faassen (05:38.445)
Yeah, no, that makes total sense. Now, how do your customers tell you they get value from your solution?

Lauren K (05:48.012)
Yeah, I mean, this is sort of what we all think about a lot every day. And I think you'd be one of the first to say that like the initial customer experience, right, of a consumer interacting with your platform. I mean, that's everything. Right. So that first connection point when you're creating an account that flow, if it's not good, you're just not going to survive in this world. So when enterprises are competing for traffic, right, for sales, for customers, whether it's

Rutger van Faassen (05:51.49)
Mm-hmm.

Lauren K (06:16.374)
again, like a digital, a neo bank or physical, like the delivery driver, right? They want every competitive edge that they can get. When you talk about that onboarding experience and then you layer an identity, that user experience is actually intricately connected and tied to compliance, to the regulations, to trust, to fraud. And so you have a host of like complicated and challenging requirements. So when you ask what kind of value our customers have generated with our solution, like the answer

Rutger van Faassen (06:29.091)
Mm-hmm.

Lauren K (06:46.146)
to me is so clear, it's been a fundamental like catalyst to helping them offer these services to the public. What they're innovating on every day with those new services, those new products that we all use and those delivery channels, digital, physical app, we've helped them grow that innovation economy overall by layering in these parallel services. So if you think about it in an average day, all the tech you depend on,

Everything that you use and the value creation that that is all meant for us. And in terms of how like we interact with customers and people every day in a safe, seamless and compliant way, like the value that drives me. And that's the value that our customers get from our solutions.

Rutger van Faassen (07:30.7)
Yeah, so a experience that is almost like unnoticeable. If you don't get noticed, that's probably the best experience, Which is kind of, you're trying to be invisible, as invisible as possible, or to make it as frictionless as possible.

Lauren K (07:38.094)
It's so funny.

Lauren K (07:45.422)
That's right. know, I tend, I tell, you know, whether it's a colleague or a friend or family sort of our success that we've had in the market and the company and they say, Oh, well, what's the name of your company? Never would have heard of it. Right. That's a good thing.

Rutger van Faassen (07:54.144)
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a good thing. Yeah. No, because if they have heard of it or they notice it that they're getting stuck because they're in the part of the process, that's a bad experience. So you don't want to be noticed by the consumer, but the customers that you help out obviously really value that, right? That you make it so frictionless and that their customer, because every bit of friction is probably a customer lost.

Lauren K (08:16.27)
And that's great.

Lauren K (08:22.094)
That's the thing, you think about in other scenarios how much time you might have to spend going through a manual process. And really, that's when you think about our Trulioo's biggest competitors, manual and expensive processes. So those physical people checking all the information. used to walk into a bank office or do something like that. So when we think about the value that FinTechs have brought to the world, we take a lot of pride in helping them get there

Rutger van Faassen (08:33.781)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rutger van Faassen (08:48.641)
Yeah, no, that's great. Now, I like to do a thing called Futures Thinking no one knows what the future is going to hold, but we can think about what a possible future looks like. And especially when you think about identity verification and onboarding, what do you think that world looks like 10 years out from now? So 2035, what does the world look like? Possibly.

Lauren K (08:56.141)
Yeah.

Lauren K (09:11.47)
You know, it's just, it's sort of, it's just, it's just quite impressive how much AI is changing everything every day. And so I think we can't talk about the future without talking about what the impact AI is having. and, and in the world of identity, it hits both sides. It has actually positive side, which is, Hey, digital identity and proofing is getting easier and faster and better, but it also hits on the negative side. And if for all of your listeners and readers who've, who've read about gen AI and

and how people have been able to easily appropriate someone's face or someone's voice or create a fake actor online to get access to services. That's actually moving much faster than the regulatory environment, for example. So it's this velocity of AI that's making it difficult to predict tomorrow, let alone 10 years. But that said, good question. I think about it a lot as a product person at heart.

Rutger van Faassen (10:02.911)
Right. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Lauren K (10:08.076)
And so when comes to identity and global commerce, I really think a lot about AI agents. And that's really like AI driven applications that act on your behalf and at your discretion. And I think that will significantly change the challenges we encounter from a trust and safety perspective and compliance. There's also just a ton of opportunity there for how we can fundamentally link and secure identity to all the tools and experiences that we do. from a strategy perspective,

I really think about in 10 years time, how much of our lives will be AI agents and AI companions that will help us organize our lives, access tools, give us the digital transactions that we want. And what do we do about that from an identity's perspective?

Rutger van Faassen (10:55.84)
Yeah, so if everyone has their own personal assistant, then the question is like, well, how do you verify it's me, right? If it's my AI assistant, talking to your, probably to your AI assistant, right? It's probably a lot of agentic AI talking to agentic AI. So that will be certainly a challenge. And probably 10 years from now, that will be some sort of a reality. So if that reality pans out, what can we do today to get ready for that kind of world?

Lauren K (11:02.338)
Yes.

Lauren K (11:06.146)
Anyway.

Lauren K (11:22.37)
Yeah, I think we really need to make sure we have solid tools that can almost do that digital conversion of you as an individual into that AI agent and make sure that we really build the connective technology where, you know, whether you're tokenizing something, whether it's a wallet, whether it's connected to your device, all the different things that we need to do to make sure that that world can be possible in a positive way.

And for me, you when we think about how we've solved identity problems today, it's all about layers. and so you don't rely on any one specific identity tool. have a whole platform that can do a variety of things. I think the best way we prepare for that future, where you'll have an AI agent and you're just, you're exactly right. Like talking to another AI agent, we make sure that we're also thinking about the layers of tools that will help ensure that that can happen safely.

Rutger van Faassen (12:08.992)
Mm-hmm.

Lauren K (12:20.396)
And so we start with one, two, three, but you think of it as a platform approach and as a layered approach so that they can all seamlessly work together and ensure safety, security, and compliance.

Rutger van Faassen (12:31.817)
Yeah, now that seems like a great way to get ready for that possible future. That is probably a good spot to wrap this up. Thank you so much, Zac, for being on the podcast.

Lauren K (12:44.054)
I appreciate it much. I love the questions and I'm a big fan. So thanks for having me on.

Rutger van Faassen (12:49.48)
Thank you so much, and until next time, choose to be curious.