Why secure digital identity is the foundation for profitable growth in financial services
By Ash Diffey (pictured), Vice President ANZ, Ping Identity
Is your institution looking to boost its digital capability in the upcoming 12 months?
If you answered in the affirmative, you’re far from alone.
In 2026, local banks, building societies and insurers are alive to the fact that their future success depends on providing stand-out customer experiences in the digital world. And the rise of Agentic AI, or autonomous AI agents who act on behalf of humans, is amplifying consumer expectations and potential gaps in security and trust. AI is changing how brands design and deliver experiences, verify trust and reduce friction across digital touchpoints.
Digital is where the overwhelming majority of interactions take place. In fact, Australians made $160 billion worth of payments with their mobile wallets in FY2025, according to the Australian Banking Association’s Bank on It: Customer Trends 2025 report.
That’s a 28% increase on the previous year’s figures and a reflection of the fact that 99.3% of customer-bank interactions now occur via digital channels. Bank branch interactions have plummeted apace – they’re down 51% since 2019, as customers give a collective thumbs up to the speed and convenience of online platforms.
The rising tide of cyber-crime
But Australians’ mass migration from physical to digital banking channels has had an unfortunate and extremely serious side effect: cyber-crime and more specifically, AI fraud.
From social engineering scams, account takeover (ATO) attacks, adversarial AI attacks, deepfakes, AI-powered phishing, synthetic identity fraud, compromised credentials and more, bad actors around the globe have honed in on the industry. Many continue to enjoy rich pickings, courtesy of vulnerable customers who’ve been duped into disclosing their log-in credentials, or transferring funds to fraudulent accounts.
Australians reported more than 108,000 scams and financial losses of around $174 million in the first half of 2025 alone. And these threats are successful based on exploiting human’s implicit trust in what they hear, see and read.
But against this backdrop of rising risk, the onus is on financial services providers to ensure their digital platforms offer rigorous protection to the consumers and businesses that rely on them, and implement technology that ensures trust can only come from what can be verified.
The Rise of Verified Trust
That’s where converged identity and access management (IAM) technology has a vital role to play. At its core, it’s a set of technologies, processes and signals that can be used to verify and authenticate a user as who they claim to be in the digital world. In a world where only the verified can be trusted, the combined impact of dynamic authentication, policy-based authorisation, identity verification and journey orchestration can come together to ensure verified trust across the entire user journey.
This spans identity proofing during the account creation phase, authentication during log-in, transaction signing, consent, fraud detection and policy-based access controls. If designed well, this makes customer onboarding faster, payments safer, personalisation easier and compliance simpler and more cost effective.
Conversely, in its absence, there’s likely to be friction for customers, the perpetual risk of fraud for the institution in question and the ever-present risk of regulatory repercussions, should a serious incident occur.
Partnering with a vendor that’s trusted by financial services around the world
While scams, cyberattacks and data breaches can damage enterprises of all stripes and sizes, financial services providers are arguably held to a higher standard than other businesses and organisations.
An incident of fraud that’s deemed to have arisen as a result of inadequate identity verification has the potential to destroy customer trust permanently. And once it’s gone, there’s no brand, no business and no future for the institution whose safeguards were breached.
It’s not an area where financial services providers can afford to take chances, or hold off on investing in up-to-the-minute technology that helps them stay a step ahead of scammers, hackers and cyber-criminals.
That’s why it makes sense to partner with a vendor that’s at the forefront of identity and access management innovation, with a stellar track record of supporting major institutions around the world to safeguard their customers’ identities and assets.
Ideally, you’ll select one that harnesses the power of AI to detect threats and authenticate users securely, capture consent, authorise data flows and detect anomalies in real time, without compromising the customer experience.
Setting your financial services institution up for a stronger, safer future
Here in Australia, the future of financial services is digital – and it’s already arrived.
Identity and Access Management is the foundation upon which a well-functioning digital banking eco-system is built, touching, as it does, every interaction, transaction, risk and regulation.
If new year business priorities include innovating effectively, providing a stand-out customer experience, stopping fraudsters in their tracks and achieving profitable growth, investing in and optimising identity infrastructure should be a priority in 2026.
