The problem
Who is on the other side of a policy? An insurer meets the policyholder at sale, often through an agent, and then again years later, when someone comes with a claim. Sometimes that someone is not the insured at all, but a brother or a cousin with the same policy. In between, beneficiaries and bank accounts change, and every change is a chance to take over the policy. An ID number on a form proves little at any of these moments if the document can be borrowed or forged.
What you get
Verification at sale
The policyholder is enrolled with iris or face when the policy is sold, and the system checks the new person against everyone already enrolled. A policy for a person who does not exist, or for the same person under a second name, is flagged at enrollment.
Protected policy changes
A change of beneficiary, bank account or contact details requires the policyholder to confirm with the same biometric. This closes an easy route to taking over someone else's policy.
Claimant verification
Beneficiaries are enrolled when they are named, so at claim time the insurer can check that the person collecting the payout is the person the policyholder chose.
Proof of life for annuities
Annuitants and pensioners confirm they are alive with a short scan at a branch, an agent or on the phone, instead of a paper life certificate that anyone can bring.
Why iris
A national register answers the question "does this ID number exist?", and where it supports biometrics, "does this face match the photo on record?". It does not tell the insurer that the person in front of the agent is the same person who signed the policy ten years ago. Iris stays usable for decades, does not wear like fingerprints of manual workers and separates people well enough to de-duplicate a whole portfolio. We use it together with face, so the remote flows on the phone and the assisted flows at agents use the same identity.
Deployment
Channels
Face capture with liveness inside your app with the open-source Biometric SDK, USB iris scanners for branches and agents, rugged BIOSID tablets for field sales. Offline agents work through the Edge service.
Where the data lives
On your servers or with our Cloud Iris API, with biometric images in ISO formats. Biometric data is stored apart from policy records, encrypted and pseudonymized, with a defined retention period.
How we start
We recommend starting with one product line, usually funeral or credit life, and one sales channel. New policyholders and their beneficiaries are enrolled at sale, and policy changes in the pilot group require biometric confirmation. This way you see the effect on lapses, disputed sales and claims on your own portfolio before rolling it out further.