Socure, the leading provider of artificial intelligence for digital identity verification, sanction screening and fraud prevention, today launched the first-ever solution to ensure sponsor banks have access to critical insights and controls required for fintech partnerships.

Most fintechs don’t have a bank charter, and instead partner with sponsor banks to provide back-end support for regulated activities like lending and deposits, which allows them to focus on creating innovative and personalized services. Sponsor banks are seeing rapid growth with one in four bankers agreeing that Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) solutions are a crucial opportunity to grow revenue and innovate. However, they’ve traditionally lacked demonstrable controls and can face hefty fines for lack of partner oversight and failure to comply with regulations.

Drawing on deep, hands-on knowledge from partnering with more than 80% of all sponsor banks and more than 400 fintechs, Socure launched Control Center to help sponsor banks responsibly seize this surging opportunity. The solution enables sponsor banks to easily manage data across a vast array of rapidly growing and increasingly complex fintech providers, de-risking support and making it easy to stay compliant and be prepared for changing regulations.

“BaaS is poised to reshape the financial services industry by fostering innovation, expanding financial inclusion and enabling more companies to provide banking and financial services, but success hinges on managing risk at the pace of digital innovation,” said Debra Geister, VP of Compliance and Regulatory Products at Socure. “Regulators are requiring stronger oversight and controls for BaaS. Our Control Center ensures sponsor banks can scale fast, while still maintaining demonstrable controls.”

When creating BaaS programs, most sponsor banks work with multiple fintech and duplicate vendors. This fragmented approach creates huge visibility gaps such as:

• Siloed data across programs and tools makes it nearly impossible to benchmark performance or spot issues across vendors and partners.
• Manual processes require extensive headcount to implement policies, monitor transactions and investigate issues — yet still lack accuracy at scale.
• Limited control over programs’ choice of vendors and technologies leads to inconsistent practices and standards across the BaaS portfolio. Thus, working with multiple vendors limits the demonstrated controls.

“As a fintech sponsor bank, the product support and expertise provided by Socure has been invaluable,” said Matthew Work, VP, Fraud and Identity Policy and Strategy at MVB Financial Corp. “Not only are we getting a market leading identity verification product, but we have a team that provides fast feedback, timely updates and direct support for existing and new clients.”

Socure’s Control Center gives sponsor banks an all-in-one dashboard providing real-time visibility into all programs’ compliance KPIs, including fraud rates, CIP approvals, lagging watchlist screening case closures and more. Additional benefits include:

• The power to quickly update policies, test impact with past customer data before implementation, add new monitoring rules and ensure consistent best practices.
• Advanced automation case management speeds review of high-risk transactions collaboratively and escalates issues as needed.
• Real-time compliance monitoring for identity verification, fraud prevention and anti-money laundering screening.

The post Socure drives Fintech Innovation with BaaS Insights and Controls first appeared on FinTecBuzz.