Markaaz CEO on Transforming Business Identity Verification for Banks

Traditional credit scores can be misleading, especially for small businesses that have weathered the pandemic. While profit and loss statements reveal some numbers, they don’t capture the full dynamics a business has experienced. Moreover, financial institutions struggle to verify about 30% of individuals applying for accounts and services.

At Markaaz, our CEO Hany Fam emphasizes the importance of comprehensive and actionable insights in the age of "know your customer" and "know your business" initiatives. Without these insights, financial institutions and companies face significant risks from impostors and potential fines for violating sanctions lists.

The Shift from Physical to Digital Footprints

In the past, bankers would visit physical branches to gather information. Today, with the rise of digital footprints, there's a shift towards newer signals like social media, open banking integrations, and consent-based access to financial data. However, identifying businesses and their owners remains a challenge.

Often, financial institutions rely heavily on the majority owner's credit score, similar to how they assess individual credit card applicants. This method overlooks the comprehensive data needed for thorough decision-making.

By better identifying and assessing the 30% of previously unverifiable applicants, financial institutions can unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in potential revenue.

The Holistic Approach to Business Data

Gathering all relevant data beyond standard profit and loss statements is crucial. At Markaaz, we facilitate this by offering a platform that integrates a broad range of data, including public and non-public financial information. This holistic approach ensures a thorough understanding of a business’s operations, relationships, and financial supply chains.

The lack of such comprehensive data negatively impacts smaller businesses, preventing them from accessing essential services like credit, cash flow, and insurance. Suppliers may miss out on opportunities with large retailers due to verification issues.

Building Trust in the Digital Age

The critical missing ingredient in today’s digital landscape is trust. Businesses must take ownership and responsibility for their data and how it’s perceived. At Markaaz, we build this trust by synthesizing and offering diverse information through our platform, which includes over 200 data elements.

These data elements encompass business health, compliance information, reputation details, and social media reviews. Diversity information is also valuable, helping firms identify businesses based on gender or ethnicity designations.

Enhancing Relationships and Security

Our goal at Markaaz is to support and memorialize relationships between bankers and clients without interfering. We accelerate the onboarding process by providing the best quality information and ensuring the highest level of security in data sharing.

For financial institutions and FinTechs, our platform’s ability to converge all compliance and monitoring obligations is transformative. This convergence streamlines processes and enhances trust.

Educating and Empowering Businesses

As Markaaz collaborates with client firms and financial institutions, we provide education on data usage and offer tools to correct inaccurate data, similar to how individuals can correct their credit reports. Our platform also enables companies to perform due diligence on potential business partners and consumers.

With open banking gaining traction in the U.S. and AI facilitating automated data collection, we’re moving towards a future where businesses can access all necessary information for informed decision-making. This access allows them to find the best deals, rates, and approval levels.

The Future of Business Verification

Looking ahead, we anticipate dramatic improvements in how enterprises identify, verify, and onboard businesses. Cleaner data will lead to real-time analysis and monitoring, fostering dynamic, rather than static, business relationships.

At Markaaz, we provide credible data that empowers businesses to build and maintain trust-based relationships, ensuring they have all the information needed for success.

Talk to our team