The Office for Digital Identities and Attributes launched a government-backed trust mark for digital identity providers at the start of this month. Certified services can display it, so a buyer or a lender can tell which digital identity checks meet the published standard. Adoption is voluntary.
The mark itself is administrative. What it makes possible is the interesting bit.
In a property transaction a buyer proves who they are to the agent, then again to the broker, then again to the lender, then again to the conveyancer. Four organisations establishing an identical fact about the same person, four times.
I wrote recently that in regulated work the checks are not the annoying part of the job, they are the job. I still think that. But four copies of one check does not buy four times the assurance. You get one check and three re-runs, and the re-runs are where the cost sits.
A trust mark is an attempt to make the re-runs unnecessary. If party two can see that party one's check met a published standard, party two can accept it instead of rebuilding it.
That will be settled by whether firms are willing to rely on somebody else's work, not by the standard itself. It is a commercial and liability question, and the technical half is always the easier half.
I run regulated businesses and I build software, so I get this from both ends. If you are building anything that touches reusable identity, find out whether your professional indemnity insurer is comfortable with you relying on a third party's verification. Do that before you look at the integration.
Co-founder of Propalt and a property investor and developer for 20 years
