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Florida and California to Use Biometrics to Tackle Covid19 Related Fraud

The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) is deploying Socure digital identity solutions, and partner with OSaaS to address COVID-19-related pandemic fraud in California.

The New York-based digital identity and biometrics firm states in a press release that it will help the DEO with identity verification and fraud detection to ensure minimal friction and cut down on losses from false claims. The DEO is an agency that connects Floridians and Florida businesses to government economic aid after natural or manmade disasters.

The company highlights the accuracy of its identity verification technology which will expedite auto-approval rates of up to 98 percent for “mainstream demographics” and up to 94 percent for hard-to-identify populations like Gen Z, Millennials, credit invisible, thin-file, and new-to-country. Additionally, Socure stresses meeting NIST IAL2 standards for government agencies that implement high assurance digital identity services.

“There’s the start of a movement in America – no citizen should be denied access to the benefits and services due to them or put through extensive manual reviews because of outdated, legacy point solutions for identity verification,”

comments Matt Thompson, senior vice president, general manager of public sector solutions.

“Socure is helping the Florida DEO innovate and advance its greater mission by allowing them to serve Florida residents in their time of need quickly, and protecting their benefits by keeping fraud out of the system.”

And across the U.S., Socure will work alongside OSaaS, a Solutions-as-a-Service public sector integrator, to verify homeowners for eligibility for a mortgage relief benefits program that addresses strain from the COVID-19 pandemic. Socure says their graph-based identity verification platform will flag suspicious claims to improve workflow and efficiency, and reduce costs for government services.

Socure cites a Secret Service estimate that almost $100 billion in pandemic relief funds were stolen, and that $20 billion was lost from fraudulent employment claims in California alone.

“Socure is the market leader in identity verification and fraud prevention. Together, we will bring world-class, innovative strategies to accurately identify and weed out the bad actors and focus on serving our actual residents, so they will have access to benefits at the state and local government level in their time of need,”

says Carlo Grifone, partner at OSaaS.

“Identity verification doesn’t need to start and end with a physical document and selfie match which many government agencies rely on today.  With our graph-based identity verification platform’s advanced analytics we can automate the process and allow legitimate consumers to get the benefits they deserve and prevent fraudulent claims,”

Thompson says about working with the State of California.

“There is a need to treat identity verification as critical infrastructure to enable trust in American society. We can, and must do better.”

Thompson’s invocation of document and selfie biometrics matching may be in reference to the furor over ID.me’s government contracts, which includes one from the Florida DEO.

The contracts mark a clear victory for Socure’s effort in the public sector digital identity verification market, seen in moves like its recent appointment of Thompson and of Brendan Peter as VP of government relations.

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