Veriff and LHV: helping a neobank go from conception to launch in under a year

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About LHV

LHV is the newest bank in the UK’s highly competitive retail banking landscape. Originally entering the UK market in 2018 by opening as a branch of subsidiary company LHV Group, a rapidly growing financial group and capital provider based in Estonia, LHV Bank was formally established in 2021 and fully licensed by 2023 - to become the first new bank in the UK In four years.    

With a focus on customer centricity, helping customers save, and being a digital-first, app-based bank, LHV has already positioned itself to stand out from the crowd in the UK’s retail banking market.

Kris Brewster, LHV’s Director of Retail Banking, explained: “The retail banking marketplace is highly competitive, but by focussing on providing better value for customers we saw an opportunity to provide a genuine challenge to the challenger banks. We fundamentally do that through offering better interest rates - by providing far better rates for customers on both our current accounts and savings products than they can get elsewhere - and we are able to pay sustainably better interest rates to our customers because of the tech we use and the app-based infrastructure we have built, which is far more streamlined and cost-effective than other banks out there.

“The next challenge was to get to market quickly. And, thanks to developments in tech, embracing artificial intelligence (AI), and being an agile business run by experienced tech people, we were able to build out our proposition and our app in less than one year.”   

What business problem did Veriff solve for LHV?

A brand new bank is always going to be a target for fraudsters, who perhaps assume that being a disruptor in the space with a hard deadline for launch points to a lack of operational experience and ill-prepared fraud prevention systems and teams. But, as many fraudsters have discovered already, LHV was more than ready for the challenge. By opting to work with best-in-class partners, LHV is able to strike the required balance between an optimum level of fraud prevention and a seamless user experience that delights genuine customers. 

“Financial crime is one of the main threats to our business,” Brewster said. “It has always been a problem but the tech developments of the last few years, especially in the realm of AI, make this the number one issue facing all financial institutions. We took the approach that if we wanted to protect ourselves and, more importantly, our customers, then we needed to work with best-in-class partners who are specialists in what they do. Veriff is very much in that class and we have been delighted with the work they have done to make our onboarding flows really secure.”

What made the difference to LHV when choosing Veriff?

It goes without saying that if you’re trying to build a retail banking app and service in less than a year, then speed is critical. But there is more to it than that, as Brewster explained:

“We were very strict with ourselves when it came to the deadline we set about when we wanted our service to go live,” he said. “We are very ambitious as a company and have a culture that is set up to get things done. That applies to our partners and tech solutions we use as well. The criteria we set is actually quite simplistic - we need to be able to implement the solutions quickly, they need to work with others, and they need to deliver - Veriff worked for us on all of those levels.”

And there is also a cultural similarity and approach to getting things done that particularly appealed to the team at LHV. “We love to set ourselves big goals, as building out a bank in a year probably shows,” Brewster said. “And that goes for our partners too. We love that Veriff challenged our ideas about what was possible, and was responsive to what we asked of them and the pace we required. There is a cultural alignment between us and we love the fact our relationship is a two-way dialogue where we get to feed in our ideas about what we need and they bring new product and feature ideas to us that will help keep our defences at the exceptional level our customers expect.”  

What was the impact of implementing Veriff?

“Veriff has made an instantaneous impact on our business.” Brewster said. “As soon as went live we started to get fraudulent attempts at breaching our onboarding flow, with would-be fraudulent customers using fake identities to try to open accounts. So having Veriff in place from the beginning gave us peace of mind that the customers that were getting through were legitimate and trustworthy.”

But it is not only fraud prevention that LHV counts on Veriff for. “There is a dual focus for us,” said Brewster. “Of course we want to build the defences that keep out fraudsters, but we want to do that in a way that makes no impact on the onboarding experience that genuine customers go through when they sign up with us. That means we want the ID checks, the biometric checks, and all the KYC checks to happen as quickly as possible. Veriff does this and helps to give our customers a really slick onboarding experience.”  

About Veriff

Veriff is a global identity verification platform helping businesses build trust online. Our AI-native technology combines automation and human expertise to quickly and accurately verify users worldwide with minimal friction.

Trusted by leading companies like Blockchain, Bolt, Starship, Trustpilot, and Webull across finance, marketplaces, mobility, gaming, and other industries.

Our trust infrastructure helps businesses stay compliant, prevent fraud, protect users, and scale globally, enabling a safer, more transparent internet for everyone.