for a customer to have their identity verified
from start to finish for identity verification
The challenge
Mettle by NatWest® is a free business account that’s easier to open and use for a traditionally underserved population: small business owners. As a fully remote business account, Mettle has two challenges to gaining market share: satisfying compliance needs at scale, while making it seamless for customers to apply for an account.
Carrying out Know Your Customer (KYC) checks is a regulatory mandate for Mettle. They had to solve this in a way that could scale with their growing team and move towards being a fully digital service.
In addition to building a mobile-first business account and fulfilling mandatory requirements, Mettle wanted to make it as easy as possible for customers to open an account. In their words, “customers just want to get an account in a way that is pain-free and easy to understand”. For customers who are used to visiting a branch, talking to an agent, and having their identity verified on-premise, opening a Mettle account digitally for the first time needs to be seamless.
Consumers expect to be able to access an account instantly, wherever they are – that’s where Mettle and Onfido joined forces.
The solution
As a digital-only product, opening branches was off the table. The team knew they wanted a digital-first partner, and looked for three things: a product that helped them verify their customers' identities, a brand they could trust to support them, and a company that would innovate as a partner, not just a technology vendor.
Onfido won out on all of the above, powered by our Real Identity approach to customer verification, bringing together a government-issued ID with a facial biometric for seamless and secure onboarding.
Joseph Connelly, Senior Product Manager at Mettle
The results
Mettle was able to get ‘production-ready’ in no time at all with Onfido thanks to our flexible SDK and comprehensive documentation. This meant they could get the Mettle product in the hands of small businesses sooner.
For Mettle’s customers, the registration process is smoother. Customers can apply for a business account in just two minutes, rather than hours or days, using just a photo ID and a short in-app video to confirm their ownership of the ID. The entire ID & Verification is now fully automated and can typically be completed in just 11 clicks.
In addition, partnering with Onfido has enabled the Mettle team to make their service more accessible. All a small business owner needs to open an account is their smartphone and an ID, rather than being within travel distance of a bank branch of their preference.
Behind the scenes, partnering with Onfido is setting up the Mettle team for scale. With Onfido’s granular breakdowns, bringing together analysis from over 30 fraud signals, the Mettle team has built custom rules to match their business logic so that they can automate the onboarding process. This means each Mettle team member can support customers more efficiently.
About Mettle
Mettle is the free business account by Natwest® that helps small businesses start, run and grow. It's designed for sole traders and limited companies and gives them the resources they need to efficiently manage the financial side of their businesses.
