A Decade of Experience – Taking Stock and Looking Forwards
ThisIsMe turns 10 years old this month. We are celebrating this special milestone by launching our new Partners Platform, codenamed Project Odin. Project Odin brings a vast array of upgrades over our legacy platform, as well as several new services, and will serve as the solid foundation for many of the exciting projects we have under development.
Now with over a decade of growth and experience under our belts, I look back on how our company has changed, the evolving landscape of our industry, and how we are committed to once again revolutionise our industry.
Faced with a Problem, We Chose to be Agile
We originally conceptualized ThisIsMe in 2013 as a way for verified identities to promote authentic transactional security.
The goal was to empower individuals with the capacity to verify their own identities using our services, earning them a stamp of approval, that they could then present to relevant financial institutions to become FICA compliant.
Although our idea generated massive interest, the market at the time did not make this model commercially viable. Facing this challenge, we made the call to reimagine ThisIsMe as a B2B service provider, wherein we would provide identity verification services to institutions to use in their due diligence workflows.
Taking a leap of faith, we committed ourselves to this new vision and transformed our business model. The risk paid off. This B2B model flourished and has led to years of service excellence and market-leading service provision to a range of industries and some of the largest financial institutions in South Africa.
Although it was a major adjustment, the experience taught us the value of ensuring constant flexibility in order to adjust to unexpected challenges and meet the demands of the industry.
Over the last decade, we have maintained this commitment to flexibility and agility. When at times our industry has become inflexible and slow, we have always maintained the capacity to develop innovative solutions to unexpected and complex problems.
What it Means to Set an Industry Benchmark
Our commitment to agility empowered us to make an incredible achievement.
In 2017, ThisIsMe transformed the South African FinTech and RegTech industry by setting the benchmark for FICA verification.
Although FICA compliance today is a digital and seamless affair, before 2017 it was an arduous process that demanded customers stand in long queues with hardcopy documents in order to become verified.
We committed ourselves to slashing this excessive time, and we succeeded: our services cut the time for digital FICA compliance from over three minutes down to only a few seconds.
This achievement won the company international acclaim, winning us the prestigious Best African FinTech award and getting us featured on the global RegTech100 list, among a host of other prizes.
The following years saw us consolidate our industry presence by greatly expanding our service offering and refining our system architecture. We launched dozens of new services, delivering on our promise of being South Africa’s most complete offering of KYC/AML and digital onboarding tools.
The Challenge of Today
But the landscape of our industry has changed. While the digitalization of FICA compliance has been achieved, the new challenge facing our industry is more personal: helping newly regulated industries to become FICA compliant for the first time ever.
The challenge is significant: tens of thousands of businesses must now comply with stringent FICA compliance requirements. Many of these businesses have never faced such compliance challenges before and are unfamiliar with how to navigate the complex challenge of customer due diligence and regulatory compliance.
In light of these new challenges, a new benchmark for industry excellence is accessibility.
Accessibility means offering easily usable products to businesses that do not have the luxury of an entire compliance department. Developing accessible and easy-to-use services, like our newly launched FICA Express service, represents us delivering on that promise.
But accessibility also means providing the knowledge and guidance to help newly regulated industries understand how to overcome their challenges. It means providing free guides, articles and resources that will make it easy for a small business to understand the problems it faces and how to overcome them. It means caring and uplifting customer service that will make businesses feel welcome and cared for in an industry they have never before engaged with.
Our Path Forward, Together with You
Recognizing the changing landscape of our industry, we are investing in setting an industry benchmark through accessibility.
Our commitment to accessibility will see us further expand our service offering with more high-quality and accessible services that are designed from the ground up to create the perfect comprehensive solutions for our clients.
Our commitment to accessibility also means delivering the best possible customer experience in our industry – for both our new and existing clients.
"We are developing not only South Africa's most comprehensive ecosystem of identity verification products available, but also investing in client experience. Our commitment to innovation allows us to constantly expand our range of solutions and meet every need, while our client support ensures an unbeatable business partnership."
Juan Furmie | Chief Executive Officer
Now with a decade of experience secured, we are entering a new and exciting chapter of our company’s history. We are grateful for our past, honoured by our current position, and excited for the future.
Partner with us as we reshape South Africa’s anti-financial crime landscape.
Juan Furmie | Chief Executive Officer of ThisIsMe
