On January 25, FinCEN's acting Deputy Director, Jimmy Kirby,
spoke before the Identity Policy Forum regarding digital identity threats, stating that FinCEN is “pragmatically focused” on protecting the U.S. financial system from illicit finance threats. According to Kirby, financial institutions must establish with confidence who their customers are on the front end and throughout the customer relationship. He noted that a failure or security compromise in any step of that process compromises the integrity of customer identity. Kirby also pointed out that security breaches have led to data hacks of centralized repositories of identity-related information, exposing personally identifiable information, and making those data sources less reliable, and that identity-related suspicious activity reports are increasing. Observing such threats, Kirby said that FinCEN designed the Identity Project to achieve three goals, to: (i) learn about financial institutions’ customer identification processes; (ii) quantify process breakdowns, vulnerabilities, and threats; and (iii) identify solutions, including digital identity. Kirby also discussed responsible innovation and emphasized the need to “foster development of infrastructure, information sharing, and standards that will safeguard the future of identity and the financial system.” Regarding expanding partnerships and feedback loops, Kirby said that the public sector must learn from each other, and that FinCEN is “also engaging with other domestic Federal agencies and regulators on digital identity, at FedID and throughout the year.”
