Esigie Aguele is the chief executive officer of VerifyMe Nigeria, a leading database management company. In this exclusive interview with Jumoke Akiyode-Lawanson, Aguele speaks about the importance of securely digitizing identities in Nigeria for economic planning and development. He also talks about the need for data harmonization and the company’s plans to introduce advanced biometric recognition products to collect and warehouse citizen data. Excerpts…
What solution is VerifyMe Nigeria offering to ensure that digital identity of Nigerians are captured, secure and properly managed for economic planning and advancement?
Our new product is a real-time ID verification platform that brings together three major repositories which are the National Identity Number (NIN), Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) through its driver’s license and Bank Verification Number (BVN). We are bringing together all these capabilities and we also took a long step back to study the industry in terms of what exactly Know Your Customer (KYC) and ID verification is, and why it is important. We figured that if you look at the global market, there is the anti-money laundering laws that actually say why KYC is important, there is the British General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) directive for privacy guidelines and we said we want to build a system that provides the most convenient verification solution to Nigerians; adhering to strict compliance rules, so that we have data integrity, but also protecting the privacy and people’s information so that we are not carelessly giving out information to people and this is why we have VerifyMe Nigeria. We want to digitize trust essentially. We can deliver digital trust to banks, consumers, employers etc. This is what will facilitate the hiring industry, lending, and so many other services. What VerifyMe is doing with the data is that we are digitizing it and not just doing last mile research on someone’s information to digitize it, but we also make that information available. With our multi-factor platform, we can link FRSC, NIN and BVN to harmonize digitized data, and that data now becomes available and enables many organizations to meet their throughput demands. VerifyMe allows very fast processing of KYC so that companies can grow.
How is VerifyMe Nigeria working to ensure that the platform is inclusive and can help create a digital identity for the millions of unbanked and unidentifiable Nigerians?
First we have a problem with being able to provide services to the about 70 million people who are documented in Nigeria between FRSC, BVN and the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC). A lot of those people cannot go and get insurance real-time, they cannot open bank accounts real-time and get other services, and that is a big problem that we are able to solve for the market today. The second thing is that there are a lot of people who are excluded from micro lending and financial services because they are unbanked and VerifyMe Nigeria is working with the National Identity Management Commission on an enrolment program so that with our platform, you can actually pre-register and we can collect biometrics and send it to NIMC to help you get your ID. The solution we have now caters to the 70 million identifiable Nigerians, but we are also very aware that both private sector and government need to come together to close the gap so that this 70 million becomes 200 million, where everybody is documented in this country, and that is our goal. We are very aware that the starting point is the 60-70 million documented Nigerians and the second phase of our battle is to digitize identity for the rest of Nigeria’s population.
Why did VerifyMe Nigeria choose the BVN, FRSC and NIN as the three repositories for collected digital data, rather than work with the telcos who have over 160million registered subscribers on their networks?
It is about the tier level of the data. So, with CBN, NIMC and FRSC, when they were collecting citizen data, there was a lot more stringent compliance. With the telcos, unfortunately, the integrity of the data is a lot less. According to CBN, if you are using telco data for verification, you cannot really consider it tier 3 data, as there is the case of pre-registered SIM cards for a lot of Nigerians. Another thing is that for the pictures they were taking, the telcos didn’t have standards for facial recognition in mind which are services that companies like VerifyMe are bringing. Although telco data is very important, it is necessary for lower level KYC .
How does your company deal with collecting and verifying data from remote locations and the challenge of inadequate mapping system in Nigeria?
This is a big problem because VerifyMe is everywhere in Nigeria. We do a lot of KYC for banks and we operate across all geographical regions in Nigeria except for areas where there are security challenges. So, if an address is not available, it is unidentifiable and we have to list it that way which is a problem in the industry. However, we still digitize it so that if somebody tries to use that address next time, it is flagged as a non-existing address. We are helping to map out addresses in Nigeria.
What does VerifyMe do about reported cases of theft or misdemeanor? For example, if a particular person has been flagged on your platform by a former employer what steps are taken to ensure that there is no re-occurrence?
One big gap we have in Nigeria today is the concept of people being able to do wrong things in one location, go somewhere else and nobody knows. We cannot stop it from re-occurring, but we can provide information to prevent repeated incidents. What VerifyMe has done by digitizing this data is that we have also created a national work history repository so that anybody who plugs into it has access to work history that anyone has reported. What this does is that it enables both corporate and domestic employers to access work history of employees.
What are the security measures that VerifyMe has put in place to ensure the safety of citizen data on its platform?
In order to be a NIMC agent in Nigeria, you have to be compliant with the laws. Data has to be hosted in Nigeria and before you can be a corporate customer using our API, we have to verify that you are allowed to operate in Nigeria. We are International Information Security Management System (ISMS) 207 compliant and we are compliant with Nigerian law in terms of our data hosting and management. We have world standard technology protecting our data and our data is our business so we know that we cannot afford to be hacked or have any issues at all, and so, we invest heavily in that area.
Apart from the corporate and domestic employee profiling, what other product does VerifyMe offer on its platform?
We also do certificate verification but it is not part of our online model because certificate verification is not digitized yet and we are really into using technology for verifications. It is also not really important for KYC. For our future, we have really exciting features that are coming to standardize and secure KYC data. In the next few months, we are going to be rolling out a lot of biometric-type recognitions for use and bring out a lot of digital services. We would be rolling out a KYC market place so that the originator of the address verification will be given a percentage share of money paid every time that particular viable address is used for authentication. So it is essentially a place where you can also sell your data.
What can the government do to ensure that citizen data are properly harnessed and processed for social development, planning, improved healthcare systems and other economic benefits?
The government needs to know its people so that it can provide adequate security and social services. It is important for Nigerians to get documented so that we can engage in our economy, get secure and know who needs to be and who does not need to be in our country, for social protection and social investment. From the private sector perspective, data and identity is the bedrock of any development that is going to happen in this country. If banks cannot lend money, they cannot make money, and by law, the banks cannot lend money if they don’t have KYC, so data is very important.
What is VerifyMe Nigeria’s business model and how does the company make profit from what it does?
We make money from people doing verifications on our platform. For ID verification on domestic staff, it costs about N500. That gives you history of work history reporting that is downloadable. It is linked to address verification, guarantor verification and all of your tiered KYC. We make money by selling our services; for example, address verification in the traditional market will cost about N5, 000 to N8, 000. VerifyMe does that for N2, 000, and for our high volume customers, we even do it cheaper because we have been able to leverage technology, we’ve been able to drop the prices in the market while still remaining profitable essentially. We have decentralized the whole process of verification while we manage and operate backend technology that makes the data have integrity. Our business process has allowed us to have a really cheap, safe product that can also make us profitable and we believe that we are going to be one of the biggest companies in Nigeria in the next few years.
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