Credas Compliance Wallet - your questions answered
n September this year, we held the official launch of the Credas Compliance Wallet at the Ivy Club in London. As part of the launch event, we opened to floor to attendees to answer any questions they may have about the wallet. Below is summarised account of those questions and their answers
The panel
Nicholas Ledingham
CCO, Credas
Neil Williams
CTO, Credas
Gruff Dodd
CFO, Credas
Your questions
How will the wallet work? How will homebuyers actually share their ID with other parties?
The wallet will have to main functions it’ll be pushable or it’ll be pullable and by that I mean the end-user or the homebuyer will have the option to “push” their wallet to another party by simply entering some contact details. That then will grant consent to someone to access their wallet via the Credas platform. The other option is that the an agent or conveyancer who is already a Credas customer can search for someone on the system and if that someone has already completed a Credas check they will be able to request access to it. The end-user will then receive a text and an email and give permission. In both cases, push and pull, the end-user will always be in charge, and will always give their consent. We’re very much going down that option, we believe its align with the nature and vision of the trust framework and what’s best for the consumer.
If there’s a push notification to a customer or agent that isn’t a customer of yours, can that customer opt in to share information with you and then build a relationship or is are you not able to do that until you become a customer?
Yes, they’re able to do it, but it won’t be as straight as an existing Credas customer. The first time they get a push notification, we’d have to on board them and they’ll have to go through a quite strict due diligence. We will openly encourage it, but you wouldn’t want us to share your customers ID with somebody we didn’t know and shouldn’t have access to it but it will be an option. They won’t be able to search for other users, that’ll be restricted to just existing customers and they may not see the full audit trial either.
As well as allowing users to shared verified credentials, do you envisage the wallet being used in other identity related operations such as login and authentication to service provider sites?
In short, at the moment no. We’ve got a very specific use case that we’ve discussed today around property transactions and addressing those challenges that the end user encounters. So, that is our main strategy at the moment. We may look then at further use cases such as a corporate directors wallet and lettings wallet working with our partners and if a use case does presents itself then we happily be open to discuss but login services and authentication isn’t part of our roadmap.
If the wallet is being made available to non-Credas customers, what will they pay compared to us longstanding customers?
I think the CFO should probably answer that. See if you get the numbers right now.
Well that’s easy actually – it’ll be a lot. Look, we obviously want to make it available to to non- customers for all the reasons Nick & Neil have mentioned earlier, but at the same time we want to be fair to our customer as well. We will make it available to non- customers. It’ll be on a pay as you go basis and it’ll take into consideration the additional due diligence work we’ve got to do to keep the data safe.
How do you see the Credas wallet evolving over the next two to three years
Yeah. Um I think we’ve touched on it already, but we we’ve got a very clear strategy primarily from day one around the the property transaction use case and solving the problems that we’ve already discussed. Once the wallet’s out we will look to add more polish to that, add more data sources and more credentials as we’ve discussed.
We’ve discussed the the Gov.UK. Wallet, there’s enviably going to be a Apple and Google wallet, when they become available, we’re going to be ready to integrate with those.
And then I suppose just to follow on in terms of the evolution of the wallet, we’ve mentioned potentially separate use cases around lettings, your corporate director checks, right to works checks, there’s lots of different possibilities.
So the way we see it at the moment is probably a number of specific wallets per use case, individual wallets. However, that may then get to a point where we consolidate all into one Credas wallet. And again, we’ll make that decision by monitoring the feedback, constantly getting those feedback loops, so we can assess what and when is the right time to make those changes.
Just to to pick up on on something that you were just talking about in that question. It’s really important though when we look at what we might do else ways that we’re absolutely laser focused that our specialization is compliance. So our specialization is not other parts of the property or lettings chain. So, we want to be the go-to compliance partner for people who are solving the other parts of problems because they have those building blocks. We can do the compliance bit better than anybody else and we’re not going to pretend we can do all the other pieces as well. So, some ideas may come from the audience, why don’t you do search packs, why don’t you do logbooks, some may come from our customers and often ourselves but you’ve got to say, “No, lets stick to the rails, stick to what we’re good at.” And that’s the compliance piece.
You mentioned the Gov.UK Wallet, there’s been a lot in the press lately about a new national digital ID card. What is your take on that?
I mean there’s a lot of press now as regards to government’s intention. The difficulty that we have is that there’s so much rumour and conjecture about what they may or may not do or when it may or may not happen. We have to deal with the now. If somebody comes up with a digital ID card that’s relevant and is within the Trust Framework and can be trusted. Yes, of course, we’ll use. We operate as an orchestration layer so we can pull in all of those elements and use them. As long as those elements are trusted but at the moment today, there aren’t those trusted digital elements. When they exist, we can bring them in and we’re we have the architecture and the UI to be able to handle that but they they just don’t exist today.
How can we encourage other participants in the chain to use the wallet functionality?
Yeah, maybe I pick up on that. It ties into the push pull that we were talking about and the sway of interest from the industry and the government and other parties around sharing wallets and attributes. We have such a large market share in the the beginning of transaction, which typically begins with the estate agent hat we would expect to see that being pushed into the conveyancing world quite significantly and through into the other areas as well. If we can co-operate well with other parties who are trying to develop or wanting to to deal with the bigger value chain outside of just the compliance element then that should start to create a ground swell. We would then expect that to start to see some of that consumer push as well.
How will digital identity will work and regulation of identity requirements.
We’ve kind of touched around the edges of this a lot already, haven’t we? Um, in summary, if you look at the Digital Identity Trust Framework, I think there are some 46 companies that are certified. There are a few in there like us who are specialists in the property sector also certified to varying degrees of confidence. The framework requirements are getting increasingly tighter and we’re at the forefront and we think its a good thing. You need to have that high level of scrutiny to build trust. That’s the first element. Trust in the services that provide the identification which we have now.
Then you need the various regulators of different parts of our industry working together to get some common standards going. So we are increasingly getting involved in the different forums, groups and government interaction which has improved a lot recently. We’ve got a lot of data to give, a lot of insight, factual insight to be able to give. It would make life so much easier and it would actually strip out a lot of costs, in terms of the staff levels and the different processes that are required and one can only assume that that will emerge as as we do become more digital and everybody can see the value in having more universal standards. Or maybe that’s just a dream.
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