During the customer onboarding process, a company must adhere to a set of rules. Technically, these regulations are referred to as Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) policies. Apart from the rules, a company must also keep the rising identity fraud in view. In 2022 alone, at least 422 million people were impacted by data breaches. Document verification can help organisations, especially those that deal with high-value transactions, verify new customers quickly and securely. Any hiccup in this phase can result in legal and reputational issues. Document verification (using OCR, ICR technologies) can help scale the operations while also maximising the security and customer retention metrics. This blog gives an overview of OCR, ICR, and document verification. Moreover, it discusses how these technologies are ushering in the digital tomorrow.
Document Verification – A Bird’s Eye View
To state it simply, document verification is the process of authenticating user documents, including personal IDs, passports, driving licences, and financial statements. Although it may sound simple, the process involves checking for security features, such as holograms, rainbow printing, watermarks, and other such features issued by the authorities. Optical recognition system and intelligent document recognition are two of the methods used for this purpose. The next part discusses them in detail.
Nonetheless, document verification also involves checking personal data on documents with third-party data sources. For instance, there can be inaccuracies in the name, address, or even contact information of the applicant. Therefore, OCR, ICR, and document verification help in reducing such errors. In the previous few years, companies have seen tremendous growth in document verification services. This boost is partly due to the promotion of contactless services during Covid. However, the point remains that there are now more customers than manual systems can handle. In order to achieve efficient scalability, a sophisticated method of document verification is required. Thus, enters the OCR and ICR era.
ICR and OCR Technologies
Optical character recognition (OCR) refers to a character and pattern recognition system for information extraction. The interesting thing about optical recognition system is that it allows companies to gather information from images, pdf files, scanned documents, and even handwritten notes. One of the main advantages of using OCR technology is that it reduces the time for data collection, storage, and retrieval. It converts those documents into digital ones that can even be formatted, thus reducing processing hours and required resources.
On the other hand, intelligent character recognition (ICR) utilises the power of machine learning to increase the working capacity and accuracy of the system. ICR excels in translating hand-written notes and documents. Moreover, a neural network powers intelligent character recognition software. Therefore, giving it the capability to learn and evolve. This feature alone makes it a viable option for the digital tomorrow.
Using quality data management with OCR and ICR, companies can ensure that only clean data is stored on their servers. Moreover, paper-based documents can incur extra physical storage and management costs, not to mention environmental effects. Whereas, OCR and ICR software enables a company to transfer all their data to the cloud and enhance the operational tasks.
Trust is the New Currency
The world is adopting a new mantra of marketing – trust. If the customers do not trust the organisations, no matter how fancy their products are, those companies are doomed to fail. In this global digital era, customer complaints travel the fastest. One small video clip can result in a tragic experience for the company. In such a landscape, it becomes imperative to introduce an inclusive system for customer onboarding. OCR, ICR, and document verification eliminate the need for standing in long queues just to get started. Moreover, a company can request additional features in these systems according to customer preferences to reduce friction.
Streamlining Customer Experience
In any service, customers prioritise trust, speed, and security. The previous step discussed trust in OCR and ICR systems. However, another perspective to view customer expectations is that they expect some sort of organisational friction. This enforces trust in them, as they get a sense of due diligence from the company. Despite this expectation, customers still demand better service. While OCR and ICR enforce a sense of security, they do so with minimum human intervention. In the long run, it means the system is less prone to errors and handles data security as it should.
OCR, ICR – Stealing the Spotlight
ICR and OCR can help the organisation streamline their document verification process. These solutions imbue a sense of security in the customers while maintaining high accuracy. Moreover, ICR and OCR help businesses comply with the regulations by getting accurate data. In short, the companies that utilise these technologies will leave the competitors in the past, while they leap ahead. What’s more, they come with advanced customisations to help your business achieve the unattainable.
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