At MeasureOne, we are passionate about consumer data rights. Given that the new year has just arrived, I thought it would be a good time for a brief reflection of 2021 along with some forward-looking thoughts.
One of the best signs of a vibrant marketplace is the growth of emerging opportunities seemingly everywhere. Unlike several years ago, the range of applications for consumer-permissioned data (CDP), or the sharing of data owned and accessible by consumers from their online accounts, is now endless. Our industry is on the brink of a truly exciting journey that will continue to transform the way consumers and businesses share data in a mutually beneficial way.
Another sign of growing market maturity, government regulatory bodies have taken an interest in this space and are asking about data ownership, security, consumer rights, consents, and other important questions. We see these types of inquiries as a welcome step in the acceptance of this market and look forward to its continued development.
A Standout Year
I want to reflect upon key accomplishments in 2021. Both from a company and a market standpoint, it was a standout year:
- Consumer-Permissioned Data & MeasureOne’s Verification Solutions: On the product front, as the first horizontal platform for consumer-permissioned data (announced June 2021), we continued pioneering new ways for consumers - and students in particular - to share their educational data with requesting businesses and organizations. This data is being used for job applications, financial products, discounts, rental applications, and for other individual benefits. All of this is being done in a fully consumer-permissioned manner with transparency and privacy as paramount.
- Customer Growth: At MeasureOne, momentum continues to grow as we look to close a successful year of signing up more than 70 businesses for our consumer-permissioned data services. We are seeing customers deploy consumer-permissioned data across a range of use cases such as job applications, loan originations, and student discount programs.
- Marketplace: From an industry standpoint, we saw the emergence of consumer-permissioned data as an increasingly important form of consumer data sharing. Consumer-permissioned banking data from companies such as Yodlee, Plaid, and Finicity is being used in a wide range of applications including digital payments, personal finance, asset management, fraud prevention, and more. Additionally, we’ve seen consumer-permissioned data move into new data domains such as income, employment, utility data, debt and others.
Trends to Watch
Looking ahead to 2022, we see consumer-permissioned data continuing to expand into new applications, with four key areas growing in importance:
- Loan Underwriting: consumer-permissioned data provides income, employment and other consumer data verifications as part of streamlining the loan underwriting process (e.g. auto loans, mortgages, credit cards).
- Employment and Background Checks: consumer-permissioned data provides the ability to quickly verify consumer data for students as well as others, including educational credentials and employment details.
- Property Management: consumer-permissioned data provides landlords with a streamlined and efficient way to verify prospective tenant information (e.g. apartment rentals).
- ID Verification/Anti-Money Laundering/Know Your Customer (KYC): consumer-permissioned data provides necessary information for businesses to establish and verify the identity of consumers in KYC flows. On the more forward-thinking front, we are seeing several blockchain-based networks building consumer identity solutions. The data on these networks is, of course, consumer-contributed and in fact consumer-permissioned. Companies such as MeasureOne will be powering the data acquisition of these networks.
We at MeasureOne look forward to continuing to play a leading role in a future where consumers take full control of their personal information to create opportunities for themselves and the businesses that serve them.
Here’s to an exciting new year ahead - happy 2022!