Onfido’s survey shows UK consumers demanding better digital identity verification

By Megha Bhattacharya

Global identity verification provider, Onfido today announced the results of its survey “Customer attitudes to digital identity: meet the expectations of tomorrow”. The survey evaluated the online behaviour of around 4000 respondents in the UK, US, France and Germany in August 2020.

Onfido’s survey found that UK consumers are more actively using online accounts since COVID lockdowns in March, yet report security and privacy concerns about opening accounts, leading to a high number of abandoned sign-ups and lost revenue opportunities for businesses.

“We are not surprised that COVID lockdowns would increase the use of online accounts, but the rate of abandonment during account sign up due to security and privacy concerns was surprising to us,” said Robert Humphrey, Chief Marketing Officer and Strategist for Onfido. “This shines a light on an opportunity for UK businesses to provide a more seamless, user-friendly process, while still engaging strong identity verification in order to improve account onboarding and authentication.”

Between April and July 2020, 65% of Brits increased how often they access products and services online, with 22% reporting they accessed their online accounts at least 50% more than usual during this time. The increased use of online services has led to several concerns about security and privacy when signing up to new accounts. UK consumers showed concern for how data will be passed on to third parties (53%), the security of the information provided (52%) and asking for too much information (37%).

The survey was commissioned by Onfido and carried out by Dynata. It was distributed and completed through an online platform. The survey was completed in July 2020 by 4,035 respondents from the UK, USA, Germany and France using an online panel.