reduction in verification time
increase in customer conversion
The challenge
Founded in 2014 as the first neobank in Canada, KOHO aims to democratize the financial system by leveraging digital technology and simplifying the everyday banking experience. KOHO helps over 350,000 customers save, spend and budget responsibly with its financial products. By providing open and intuitive options to consumers with no surprising fees, KOHO is meeting consumers’ needs as an alternative to the Big Five banks in Canada.
As KOHO began to scale and expand its use cases, they found that their existing identity verification solution was turning away too many good users. KOHO needed a new partner who could solve the problem that faced them: how to remotely verify their applicants’ real identities without compromising on user experience.
The solution
After evaluating multiple options, KOHO partnered with Onfido due to its benefits for both them and their customers.
On the business side, Onfido’s developer-friendly approach and documentation enabled the technical team to integrate Onfido’s SDK in a matter of weeks and get to market faster. Onfido also fit the bill as a global partner with comprehensive Canadian document coverage. The KOHO team leveraged Onfido’s market expertise and had a direct line to Onfido’s in-house document fraud and technical experts throughout implementation.
On the customer side, building a great user experience is a priority for the KOHO team. Onfido’s in-house UX design experts drove a regular cadence with the KOHO team, sharing best practices for the identity verification experience. This helped optimize their onboarding flow to maximize the number of users completing verification.
Peter Lu Credit & Lending Product Lead, KOHO
The results
KOHO needed to meet compliance and fraud needs without compromising on user experience. With Onfido as their preferred identity verification partner, they’re doing that and more.
By partnering with Onfido, Koho is verifying and onboarding 15% more users compared to their previous provider. The combination of robust image quality checks at the SDK level, and human-in-the-loop processing by Onfido, has enabled more users to access Koho’s products.
Onfido’s proprietary machine-learning algorithms protect KOHO from the key types of document fraud while ensuring that the document owner is live and present. Since implementing Onfido, the level of identity fraud has drastically decreased while also reducing false positives. This means that conversion rates have remained high, allowing the business to grow, confident that they’re mitigating risk.
KOHO’s customer sign-up experience has also improved. Today, KOHO customers can sign up and verify their identity in minutes. Previous vendors offered up to a two-hour response time. So KOHO can onboard more customers. Fast.
As KOHO continues to grow and expand its suite of customer offerings, Onfido will serve as the critical 'backbone of risk control' for their business. To learn more, visit koho.ca.
Discover "successful and secure customer onboarding" insights from Michael Fox, Vice President of KOHO Financial in this American Banker webinar.
About KOHO
KOHO is a new era of banking, rooted in the belief that a better banking experience exists. They’ve set out to build it for all Canadians, from Tofino to Fogo Island. They’re restoring financial balance by empowering people through their finances.
