The country’s crime check authority has enhanced identity verification and screening to keep pace with advanced fraud and digital impersonation capabilities.

Since 2009, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) has been managing identity checks and screening services for government-issued documents including passports, driver’s licenses and ID cards submitted by vendors, customers and tenants.

Since 2014, a private agency accredited by the ACIC to provide such services, National Crime Check (NCC), had launched the InstalD program in 2014 to automate and digitalize the identity verification processes.

Now, in view of the rising global threats of cyber fraud and identity crime such as deepfakes, bots, and sophisticated spoofing attacks, NCC has expanded its InstalD program with real-time identity checks via linkage to the Australian Government’s Document Verification Service (DVS).

This real-time access to the DVS database provides organizations with a higher level of assurance that ID documents are valid and legitimately issued by the Australian government. It is also expected to shorten customer onboarding time from hours to minutes and save up to 40% of costs.

The enhanced system adds AI, machine learning and biometrics functions to automate the verification process and help companies improve conversion rates, comply with anti-money laundering and Know Your Customer regulations to improve fraud detection while delivering a definitive Yes/No decision within seconds.

For identity verification checking, features such as ‘certified liveness’ detection can detect when photos, videos or even realistic 3D masks are used instead of actual selfies to create online accounts.

According to Dean Hickman-Smith, spokesperson for Jumio, the long-time technology partner for NCC’s InstalD system: “The challenge of today’s organizations is to create a seamless identity verification process while reducing transaction friction and deterring fraud. We look forward to taking our partnership to the next level as NCC scales its InstaID system to accelerate user onboarding while simultaneously reducing online fraud.”