How Ultimate Finance streamlined its onboarding with biometric ID&V and secure instant messaging

Ultimate Finance is a specialist asset-based lender, providing a wide range of flexible funding solutions to support the ambitions of UK businesses. Through their understanding of the SME mindset and the need for a personal and flexible approach to lending, they tailor their funding to best suit client needs and are focused on finding the right solution to help businesses unlock their true potential to succeed.

The Challenge

Ultimate Finance was looking to become the funding partner of choice for borrowers by not only competing on cost but providing a more efficient secure customer service.

Its traditional method of borrower identification relied on the in-house team verifying documents manually.

It required additional effort for the customer in sharing the documents and was inefficient for Ultimate staff. How could this long-winded approach be improved?

The Solution

Nivo was able to help Ultimate Finance streamline the process by using secure biometric identification and verification (ID&V).

When Ultimate Finance received an application from a potential borrower, an automated SMS was triggered – asking the borrower to download the Nivo app to complete their application.

Once downloaded, an intuitive, secure, and automated journey started with the borrower confirming contact details and undertaking a biometric ID check by taking a photograph of either their driver’s license or passport. Using AI technology, it could be verified in just 30secs.

Ultimate Finance was automatically notified and when logging into the Nivo agent portal was able to view the borrower’s progress and access the report. They could then validate the customer was genuine and decide whether to proceed. The whole chain could be completed within minutes.

The Result

Ultimate Finance’s integration of Nivo has proved a great success. Having joined forces in March 2019 to implement ID&V technology, it is now looking to broaden its use of Nivo solutions into open banking.

Andy McKee, Ultimate Finance’s Chief Information Officer, says:

“We kept running into the same problem with ID&V and open banking – the customer experience and ease of engagement.

“Nivo’s toolkit appeals because it allows us to simplify the conversation, creating a straightforward process that takes our customers through the journey pain-free.

“I’ve integrated lots of IT solutions in lots of industries and this was one of the easiest implementations I have ever run. We now put all of our application ID&V processes through Nivo, it’s become a default part of our business.

“More recently, we’ve also successfully completed a pilot using Nivo’s open banking and the plan is to roll out open banking across the organisation to further improve the experience for our customers.

“Overall, it’s not just that Nivo offer innovative solutions, they are also responsive. It’s great to work with a supplier who does what they say they’ll do, moves fast and is more than happy to engage in solving any problem.”

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