Digitising Proof of Life

The need for a customer-friendly pension process

Pension providers need to provide solutions for remote identity verification that are efficient for administration and enjoyable for the end customer. Remote identity verification plays a crucial role in ensuring pension funds are paid out to nationals living abroad on time, and also that the person receiving the payment is alive.

In the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, pension providers are automatically notified of death to prevent money from being paid out to someone who isn’t alive, but this isn’t the same across all countries. The current process requires a paper form notarized by a government official and can take weeks to be approved. Costly and very customer unfriendly for elderly people enjoying a well-deserved pension.

Take the example of a retired Dutch national living in Indonesia. To get their proof of life form notarized, they had to travel to another island to visit the Dutch embassy, turning an already weeks-long process into an additional 2 days of travel for the customer to get the paper form stamped and sent back to the Netherlands.

Hyfen sought to improve the proof of life (attestation de vita) process in 2 ways:

1. A more efficient and fraud-resistant process for the pension provider
2. A more enjoyable and faster customer journey for the retired individual 

The team implemented the ReadID Ready app in the following process. Firstly, the Dutch national received either a letter, email, or WhatsApp message with a QR code. This code instructed them to download the ReadID Ready app to their device and complete a photographic scan of their identity document, read the NFC chip inside the corresponding document, and face verification step to prove life. The app provides clear, easy-to-follow instructions and makes it clear that no data was tied to the device, meaning the individual could ask a friend, relative or even neighbour for assistance with the identity verification process confident in the knowledge that their data is safe. Rather than the traditional paper-based process, the digitised proof of life process Hyfen trialled saw responses within 10 minutes of the QR code being sent, drastically increasing the efficiency of pension fund administration.

Digitisation key for the Pension industry

As with any new technology, its success depends on the acceptance of the app by both users and regulators. The elderly may be resistant to trying new technology, especially that which requires access to private personal data and documents such as passports.

This turned out not to be the case, as they can be helped by others and can even use other people's smartphones for the task if needed. As the pensions industry is heavily regulated and compliance-orientated, it is important all actors in the ecosystem are confident that data is transferred securely- and NFC is quickly becoming one of the most trusted data transfer methods around the world.

Hyfen’s trials proved to be a great success for both the end user and pension providers. They now live with a digital proof of life as part of their platform. For example, bpfBouw introduced it in February 2022 with 1/3 of all customers abroad using the new possibility. This, we believe, is the beauty of NFC as a form of remote identity verification.

ReadID and Inverid are dedicated to creating an enjoyable customer journey, and therefore provide a secure SDK that can be built into an app optimised for any industry. For example, an app using the ReadID SDK could also combine other customer journeys, creating an app that allows retired individuals to both claim their pension and forecast their income all in one place.

Digitisation is vital for the pension industry in Europe to embrace the future so that their customers can reap the benefits of their past, safely and securely.