Bridging Africa’s Digital divide through robust infrastructure for compliance and security

The internet has evolved beyond a communications medium. It’s an essential platform for the free flow of information, impacting individuals, society and the entire world. To keep today’s increasingly connected world free and secure, and to ensure that everyone may operate with privacy, the technology community, governments and corporate boardrooms need to invest in digital trust.

Investing in digital trust requires a trusted partner that provides a fully robust platform for security and compliance across the internet. Digital Businesses across Africa from different sectors trust Prembly’s vast array of user-friendly software and APIs to provide top-notch security against fraud on their platforms while maintaining regulatory AML and KYC compliance.

In this interview, Lanre Ogungbe, CEO of Prembly barred his mind on array of critical issues including the disruptive trends in the financial sector and it’s impact of data protection laws, the need to develop and boost digital infrastructure and the future of KYC/AML compliance.

Interview:

What problem is Prembly trying to solve, and why is it so important?

Trust is needed for the internet to work, and the internet is especially important for the global economy, especially in Africa, where digital connectivity is needed to fix some of the infrastructure problems on the continent. This is why Prembly exists: we offer a fully featured platform for internet security and compliance, giving businesses the tools and services they need to stay compliant and protect themselves from fraud, cyberfraud, and other activities by bad actors on the internet.

Identitypass secured seed funding of $2.8 million in May to expand its product suite, boost its reach, and develop infrastructure. What does this entail for your business?

It means that we are expanding faster as a result of the funding, from products to people and processes. We already released two new products: a security product and a background-checking solution. We are also expanding into new African markets and recruiting new employees across board. One interesting thing we are also doing w

Why this rebrand decision and why Prembly?

We chose a new name to reflect the company’s recent expansion and commitment to providing a more robust infrastructure for compliance and security throughout Africa and beyond.

The new brand identity reflects our global ambitions and mission to make the Internet safe for all. We will continue to innovate in order to meet the needs of our clients and assist them in seamlessly adapting to industry trends and market changes.

What are the target markets for your new product offerings, and how will they serve those markets?

We have multiple target markets.

Firstly, our aim is to help African businesses easily stop fraudulent events and help them expand across African countries seamlessly.

Secondly, we want everyone in the region to have access to digital services and products that other individuals on other continents also have. Hence, our goal is to ensure everyone in Africa has access to such types of services. While we achieve this, some of our products will serve businesses from anywhere in the world, especially our security and business operations solutions.

Recognizing disruptive trends in the financial sector, to what extent would you say data protection laws have secured businesses across Africa and, in fact, the globe?

This is a very interesting question because people often view data protection laws only from the lens of the consumer but not necessarily how it affects businesses. Even though there are limited data points on “to what extent” it affects, from industry knowledge, these laws really help sharpen the way certain businesses (especially in the technology space) are conducted and in turn, protect the integrity of the services rendered.

On the data protection side of things, many activities are going on which protect end-users and businesses. Globally, many countries (developed) have made significant strides in data protection, which has helped many businesses to be ethical and still be able to provide the required services. I believe that Europe has made significant progress in data laws and technology; Estonia is a good example. They are doing an incredible job with data, and I am sure it would have positively influenced the businesses that operate in the country.

While many countries have different data laws in Africa, the concern usually is how practical, evolved, and easily implementable these laws are to providing required services to the consumer.

And while we look at laws, we also need to emphasize the need for many fundamental infrastructures to implement good data protection systems.

We still have a long way to go before we reach our full potential in Africa around security.

There are quite a few nations, including Nigeria, that are moving in the right direction, but there are also quite a few that are falling further and further behind.

Because data protection is not yet a concern or a priority to many, among other things these countries are facing – which is understandable.

One thing to note is “data laws” don’t have to be extreme. The most fundamental is giving more power to the “data owner, ” the end user. While we do this, it should still be easy for businesses that heavily rely on data before they can provide certain services to be able to perform their functions after getting user consent.

Most banks today have gone digital in varying degrees, while a few others are exploring virtual banking with no physical structures or interaction whatsoever. Would you tag this as a welcome development since it entails more efficiency and compliance, or are there other compliance issues to be considered before going virtual, that is, completely online?

This depends on the metrics used to evaluate this. From the perspective of the banking industry, it’s fantastic that banks can expand their customer base without spending as much on physical assets, including maintenance. However, user culture has not fully assimilated this experience.

Currently, most users are accustomed to visiting a physical office when they have issues or complaints. This is the advantage that physical banks have over virtual banks, in my opinion. In addition, from a compliance perspective, they can confirm that consumers are not operating by proxy and are performing these operations or documenting themselves (when they have a physical office).

But banking experiences are evolving so virtual banking is here to stay.

The good thing is both virtual and physical banks collaborate with organisations like ours to ensure compliance and provide individuals with access to financial services.

Digital banks’ efforts mostly are to mimic the experience a customer would have in a physical office. This is a significant step in ensuring that people have faster access to financial services, in my opinion.

But as a side note, even more so than having access to a physical bank, we should ensure that this is completely secure from a compliance perspective. Consumer experience in banking needs to be seamless and less chaotic and if a virtual/digital solution is the better route to achieve that, it’s a great evolution.

From the perspective of compliance, there should be a continuous development of services and products that make online banking secure and safe. This requires ensuring the existence of the appropriate data points, synergies with the appropriate government bodies, and the right privacy policies.

These three main issues plague banks and other financial institutions in the digital space today; Fraud detection, Fraud prevention, and KYC/onboarding requirements, considering your impressive client list, describe how Prembly has succeeded in assisting its clients in this regard?

Keeping a close relationship with our clientele has been essential to our company’s success. We maintain frequent communication with them in order to fully comprehend and address their primary concerns around compliance and security.

Many of our customers today have been able to drastically reduce the high “fake identities” they receive when customers sign up.

We have tailored many of our authentication and verification solutions to suit different sectors as we have done extensive research to understand the “user journey and behaviours” in many sectors and regions across the continent. Hence, we understand what it is that they require and easily detect millions of fake identities, impersonations, wrong transactions and events. These efforts are continuous and, we will continuously invest in R/D in order to be ahead of the latest trends and project futuristic behaviours.

Still on your remarkable client list, there appears to be greater adoption with banks, fintechs, and lending platforms, even though your services extend to other sectors like e-commerce, logistics, and mobility. Would you care to reiterate how your service offerings can be beneficial to these sectors?

Fintechs and banks are at the top of our customer list because their services are subject to the most stringent regulations. They are unable to conduct business without compliance. As a business that deals with people and money, you cannot afford to take compliance lightly; Otherwise, problems will arise.

In fact, as a consumer, you should recognize that the absence of compliance checks is a warning sign.

But we have clients in multiple sectors. For instance, in the insurance industry, when individuals are enrolled in different types of insurance, we verify that they are who they claim to be, and we flag and investigate any odd behaviour. In logistics, we conduct background checks on drivers for businesses, we also provide services to many HR firms for background checks on prospective employees. So while the fintech and banking sector leads the list, we have many sectors.

While we are well aware of CBN’s sanctions on the trading of virtual assets, specifically cryptocurrency, there are still crypto surges in Nigeria and even beyond Africa. With increasing reports of crypto fraud losses, are there any stricter laws the CBN could pass to reduce these financial crimes?

More extensive consultation with players in the sector by the CBN will help a lot in understanding the type of regulations that will help the most.

Regulations would help reduce financial crimes, but this isn’t just with virtual assets.

There are still a lot of financial crimes with the traditional assets system we have.

There is little to no overlapping in a few areas of how virtual assets operate and how the CBN wants them to operate. What I mean is; many virtual asset leaders claim that crypto and others should follow a decentralised model and be less affected by monetary regulations. This line of thought contradicts what the CBs in many countries stand for. CBN was created to regulate and that was why I earlier hinted that the crypto players and the regulators need to consult and create some overlapping to create a more secure ecosystem for the consumers.

In July, many virtual card companies like Barter under Flutterwave shut down business as their leading providers pulled the plug. One of such providers, Union54, cited its reason for suspending business as “a necessary compliance audit.” There are many speculations that these issues were largely caused by chargebacks and fraud. Are there any suggestive measures to handle these issues that could save businesses subsequently?

Yes, but the infrastructure providers like Union54 / Flutterwave most times place a lot of effort on this, but the loose ends are usually from other businesses reselling or using these infrastructures. Businesses that rely on infrastructure players such as Flutterwave needs to be stringent on KYC and security. When they are not, it affects the entire system. If the underlying compliance checks are weak from the businesses enrolling individuals, it creates loopholes and more vulnerability to the circle. From the infrastructural players’ side, they would need to collaborate more with regulators on ease of fraud reporting and on the regulator’s end, they need to ensure offenders are sanctioned. For example, if someone is flagged for fraud within a business, that person should be stopped and barred from ever doing business with any other entity.

It’s worth noting that, businesses (especially in the financial sector) need to always be dynamic when it comes to customer security.

Fraudsters are always on the lookout for new methods to steal from their victims – they aren’t always static.

Recently we have noticed a trend where a group of persons have generated smart ways of using “social media trends” to gather information about fraud victims and use the weak onboarding systems of some financial solutions to defraud them.

We’ve always warned businesses not to have too long (multiple years) KYC systems without implementing some changes to remain dynamic except the current system is leakproof just to meet up with the dynamic nature of consumer behaviours.

How would you describe the future of KYC/AML compliance? Any final thoughts on how you or your organization will be a part of this future?

KYC/AML will include more data and events in the future.

In Africa, compliance checks across regions and countries will be interdependent if the signed African free trade agreement across countries is rightly implemented, it will eliminate some sort of repetitive compliance checks and more countries and businesses can easily share the “bad players” list.

As a business, we will endeavour to always meet our customers’ needs. We want to drive the needed changes in KYC/AML in Africa and be the standard for it. We will create products and services that allow consumers to control their data efficiently. And our technologies will run deep with a combination of government-approved IDs, user behaviours, biometrics attributes and social data and knowledge.