Andrey Sever, Co-founder & CEO at Sumsub: Staying Ahead of Fraudsters with KYC Processes

Sum & Substance, or Sumsub, is an independent tech company providing KYC/AML solutions.

Andrey Sever, the Co-founder and CEO at Sumsub joins Fazzaco today. He is happy to talk with us on numerous trending topics.

Fazzaco: KYC/AML involves documents to be submitted. How to deal with translation? Your users could be anywhere, which means different regulatory requirements. How do you deal with it?

Andrey: Sumsub's goal is to help businesses around the globe onboard their users. To achieve this, we've built an automated KYC solution that can check documents from over 220 countries and territories (that's literally every country in the world!). Our verification system recognizes a whole range of different languages, be it Indonesian or French.

As soon as a new document type or a new regulatory requirement appears, we know about it. For instance, when some AML regulators in Europe started to require businesses to conduct video verification - a real-time video call that confirms a customer's identity - we developed a special video-based KYC solution for that purpose.

We also have an in-house legal team, which ensures that our KYC solution meets local and global AML and data protection rules.

Fazzaco: How does Sumsub detect any fraudulent intention? Are your algorithms different from your competitors'? What will trigger the alarm?

Andrey: We often come across fraudsters that fake documents. For instance, they use Photoshop to replace the picture of a document owner. To protect businesses, Sumsub's fraud detection system checks hidden parameters of ID documents and detects traces of graphic editing software and physical tampering.

The cherry on the top is our in-house liveness solution, which detects even the most advanced spoofers. It can stop deepfakes, hackers, fraudsters wearing masks, and much more.

Fazzaco: KYC includes video, audio / voice, fingerprint, facial recognition etc. Do you believe that multi-recognition will be mainstream? Which recognition manner, in your opinion, will be the future trend?

Andrey: I think that the future lies in biometric recognition of various forms (facial biometrics, voice recognition, etc.). However, it's worth noting that if a platform employs several recognition methods at once, it can bring down conversion rates and create unnecessary verification steps. I'd say that facial biometrics alone is enough for most cases. It's the most popular and secure option for proving that a live person is present.

Fazzaco: Forex trading is becoming increasingly scam-ridden, especially in Southeast Asia. Do you have any users from SEA? Which market does Sumsub plan to expand to?

Andrey: Yes, Sumsub works globally, so we have users from every region, including SEA. When we onboard SEA users, we take into account local specifics. For instance, older Indonesian electronic ID cards (e-KTPs) may have an expiration date written on them. If you look at a card, you may see that the card is expired. But by law, all e-KTP cards are valid for a lifetime. So, even if we come across an 'expired' card, we'll still accept it.

Sumsub is planning to continue expanding worldwide, including a consolidation in SEA and Latin America.

Sumsub is continuously evolving. We're constantly detecting new fraud patterns to further strengthen our system. For example, when fraudsters started using deepfakes, we created our liveness technology that can keep our customers safe from all kinds of imposters.