Increase in automated verification
average verification time
Background:
Mann Island, part of Investec Bank PLC, provides finance for private and business customers across the UK, helping them to finance new and used vehicles and motorhomes.
Founded in 1991 and acquired by Investec in 2014, Mann Island Finance is building a scalable, flexible, and comprehensive approach to financing.
Challenge:
Mann Island Finance, the motor finance arm of Investec Bank, has been helping customers finance new and used vehicles and motorhomes since 1991. They set themselves apart with a comprehensive, personalized experience, working with dealer partners to help customers buy, lease, or rent vehicles.
As a lender regulated under the FCA, Mann Island Finance is required to verify customers to comply with KYC /AML requirements before they can offer financing. With impersonation fraud presenting a growing threat, knowing a genuine customer from a bad actor has benefits that include avoiding regulatory risk, financial losses, and reputational damage.
During the COVID pandemic when their day-to-day interactions became digital by default, Mann Island put their identity verification and e-signature processes under the microscope. Previously they were using Knowledge Based Authentication (KBA) to verify new customers for KYC and fraud prevention. This presented three issues:
Verification not built for scale. As their customer base grew, KBA created a lot of pressure on their internal teams. Only 25% of checks were automated end-to-end, leaving the remaining 75% for Mann Islands Operations and FinCrime teams to manually review, draining the team’s capacity.
Customers paid the price for manual processes. Mann Island aimed to stand out from the competition with a fast, seamless experience from sign-up to pay-out. But some customers got caught in the manual KBA bottleneck, increasing the risk of dissatisfaction and drop-off.
Failing to deliver on product and brand strategy. Being a frontrunner in the financing space is about creating automated, personal, digital experiences. But in relying on a heavily manual KBA process, Mann Island were straying from this goal. That’s where Onfido came in.
The solution:
To deliver on their promise of seamless, personal experiences, Mann Island integrated Onfido’s document and selfie Biometric verification into their customer onboarding flow. New and existing customers requesting finance today simply take a picture of their ID, then take a selfie, and are then funnelled into the remainder of Mann Island’s e-signature process.
Mann Island Finance chose to partner with Onfido for two key reasons. Notably, they required a solution that would perform well in a browser-based journey without customers needing to download an app — this was made possible with Onfido’s Web SDK. From a performance perspective, Mann Island had to make sure that they improved speed without compromising on auto-approval rates.
The results:
A scalable, compliant, and personalized experience was top of mind for Mann Island as they deployed Onfido. The results have been clear:
Creating a scalable customer verification process. Powered by Onfido’s hybrid verification approach of AI and human experts, Mann Island has seen dramatic improvements in their automation rates. With Onfido, Mann Island has increased their auto-approval rate by 300%, with 91% of customers requiring zero manual intervention. This has enabled Mann Island to scale operations, too; the team has grown their customer base 4x without needing to hire any extra Operations and FinCrime agents.
Delivering real value to customers. Automating their internal processes has translated directly to customer value. Customers are approved in 1 - 2 minutes on average, empowering Mann Island to deliver a seamless journey from sign-up to pay-out. Building a strong assurance in customers has allowed Mann Island to provide best-in-class services without ever physically meeting their customers.
Bringing product and brand promise to life. Mann Island is laser-focused on enabling a better UX through automation. With a digital identity verification experience, the team can continually optimise the experience, as they have done with their unique MIDOS portal, a digital-first way for customers to sign-up, verify, and request financing with zero physical paperwork.
Since implementing Onfido, Mann Island has received special recognition. The company won ‘Finance Provider of the Year’ at the Motor Trader Awards in December of 2022. Also, Reid won ‘Technology Innovator – Person of the Year’ at the Credit & Collections Technology Awards in November of 2022.
For Mann Island, the next step is to continue this journey, leading the way in the financing world with a superior customer experience.
Lynn Reid, Head of IT, Mann Island Finance
