GBG helps Jordans deliver a state-of-the-art ID verification service to its client base
About
Jordans, now Vistra, is a global fund administration, trust and corporate services provider
Company size
1,001 - 5,000 employees
Industry
Professional Services
Location
Global
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The Jordans Group brings together a unique team of lawyers, accountants, trust managers, data specialists, company formation agents, property search specialists and publishers.
This means that Jordans can offer clients a broad spread of services. These range from company formations and outsourced administration, corporate and commercial know-how and business information and compliance services.
With offices around the world from London to Hong Kong and the Seychelles, the company celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2014. Its consultants can provide advice on accountancy, worldwide tax planning and asset protection structuring. Jordan’s selection of business information products deliver fast, easy access to valuable market insight, business data, monitoring and many other services. The company constantly adapts and expands its products and services to fit its clients’ changing needs.
Jordans is a firm of corporate consultants with offices worldwide. They wanted to offer their customers an extended ‘know your customer’ checking service without reliance on paper documentation.
Jordans chose GBG ID3global to develop its own ID verification service.
How GBG helped Jordans
By choosing GBG ID3global, Jordans is now able to:
- Offer new ID and anti-money laundering checking services
- Help existing clients reduce risk
- Extend its existing client base
- Build in the opportunity to do international searches when required
The most successful organisations recognise the value of understanding individual identities.
GBG combines individual identity data with technology to provide our clients with the identity data intelligence they need to make good business decisions. That’s why Jordans chose to partner with GBG to develop its own ID verification service, offering robust and flexible identity checking and AML protection to its clients.
GBG ID3global matches personal information against reference data for more than 4 billion citizens across the globe - 56% of the world's total population - offering a robust level of ID check to reliably verify customer details and detect application fraud.
It would have taken much longer to get up and running without the engagement and support of GBG’s Professional Services Team.
The challenge
Developing a new revenue stream
Ray Ruffles took over as director of Business Information at Jordans in 2013. With 25 years of business information experience behind him, Ray is spearheading the company’s plans to broaden its portfolio of data and marketing products. As know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) checks become standard business practices, building a new product to offer individual-level checks was a natural progression.
“We already provide KYC checks using directors and company information but we didn’t provide any checks on individuals,” says Stephen Blacker, Product Development Manager at Jordans. “Adding a new standalone online service to offer UK ID verification and AML checking would nicely complement our
existing offering.”
Rather than building their new product from scratch, Jordans wanted to tailor an established third-party solution to suit the legal and accountancy practices
that make up much of the Jordans client base. The final UK-only product would offer an identity check, an AML check and an enhanced AML check.
During software development, Jordans also wanted to move from its traditional, sequential Waterfall project approach to an Agile software development method based on short, intensive development and review periods called sprints. That would demand solid technical support from its new ID verification partner.
“We used to spend a long time writing the specification and then doing the software development, with a long time testing,” says Blacker. “Agile development was a completely new concept for us and this project was
ideal to trial it on.”
What really sold the GBG solution to us initially was their expertise.
The solution
Looking for the right partner, Jordans started to research the market in September 2014.
After asking three vendors to demo their offerings, GBG quickly took an early lead.
“GBG ID3global fitted our needs best and the option to add international searches in future was attractive,” says Blacker. “But what really sold it to us initially was the GBG team’s expertise. Every question we asked them, they answered in great detail. The other suppliers’ demos were slick but we made a decision that GBG were a better fit for Jordans”
With GBG ID3global, you can verify the identity of almost anyone, at any time, anywhere in the world. It combines reference data for more than four billion people to help detect application fraud during screening. GBG also offers extensive configuration options that let users select the right mix of data, checks and scores to match their desired risk profile.
“We took a couple of weeks to trial the GBG solution using the web portal, running searches and exploring the functionality,” says Blacker. “In November 2014, we started working with GBG to develop our new product.”
“Jordans always deliver quality products to their customers and that commitment to excellence meant they were determined to choose the UK’s best-of-breed IDV solution,” says Nigel Clark, UK Sales Director at GBG. “We are delighted to add our ID3global service to their portfolio.”
As well as running look-ups via an online portal, GBG’s clients can easily integrate the GBG solution with their own systems via an open web service API. Jordans took advantage of this option. “We worked in conjunction with a focus group of solicitors and accountants to build the Jordans front-end screens ourselves and interfaced to the GBG solution at the back end,” explains Blacker.
30
30 new clients for Jordans' new products within two months of launch
The benefits
Starting from scratch, Jordans finished development of its new ID & anti-money laundering services product within four months.
Inside three months, they had a working version to trial with two large clients that were interested in the new product.
Based on their feedback, Jordans changed and simplified the front end design during the next sprint. Using a “traffic light” method to indicate different levels of risk was one key improvement. GBG’s Professional Services Team offered expert support at all stages.s.
“It would have taken much longer to get up and running without the engagement and support of GBG’s Professional Services Team,” says Blacker. “The documentation for the API was precise and, based on how well this project went, we’ve now adopted Agile development company-wide.”
Swift software development was followed by commercial success, with 30 clients signing up for the new product within two months of its March 2015 debut. They are using the system successfully, with no problems reported and some fraudulent ID documents have already been detected. With the GBG solution facilitating convenient online demos, remote training and online support, the Jordans sales team have further business wins in their sights.
“It’s been very well received,” says Blacker. “Many businesses are actively looking for AML products and we’re finding that ID & anti-money laundering services opens the door for us to then sell other Jordans business information products.” Jordans is now enhancing ID & anti-money laundering services with GBG’s international passport and EU ID card checking features, and will work with GBG to offer a batch AML checking option in future.
“Our relationship with Jordans further demonstrates our commitment to work with channel partners,” says Andy Chrascina, Head of New Business at GBG. “Jordans leads its market, the value of combining the products is significant and enhances the brands of both companies.”
“As well as excellent on-going account support from GBG, we’ve had great help in selling our service to clients, with plenty of supporting documentation on the features and data it uses,” says Blacker. “Working with GBG, we’re helping our clients use the latest identity data intelligence technology to reduce their risk, improve the efficiency of their business processes and provide a better experience for their own customers.”
- Jordans utilises GBG’s white-labelled platform, driving immediate extra revenue for the business.
- Simple integration via industry-standard API.
- GBG’s expert technical advice and information supports rapid Agile software development.
- GBG’s comprehensive reference data combined with accurate matching and flexible system configuration delivers ID and fraud screening precisely tailored to each user’s needs.
