What’s the point of a degree?

‘Place nose on dot.’ That’s what my screen is telling me to do as the first step in a ‘liveness’ test I must complete to be accepted as a signatory on a club bank account. But if I align the image of my face with the dot, nothing happens. If I press my nose to the screen, I go cross-eyed. And if the test’s purpose is to make sure I’m not dead, it would be simpler to ask me to shout at it. After the sixth failed attempt, that’s what I do – cursing the modern world in which identity fraud is so prevalent that all new connections between customers and banks have to be preceded by elaborate proofs like this one (bought in from a Californian software company), while somewhere out there, most likely in Russia, industrial-scale fraudsters are scamming tens of thousands of innocent citizens en bloc – and back in the City, the banks themselves are habitually mis-selling, sanctions-busting and otherwise behaving far worse than the vast majority of frustrated would-be account holders.

All of which is a preamble to congratulating our Economic Innovator of the Year, ComplyAdvantage, a London-based business which uses artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analysis on a huge scale to help clients across the financial sector detect all forms of felony. And what a tidal crime wave it has to address.

UK Finance, the trade body for the sector, reckons £1.2 billion was lost to fraud in the UK last year, the bulk of it online through stolen card details – though the same amount again was stopped by banks before the money reached the criminals. The shame, in both senses, is that cyberfraud is such a massive growth market; the consolation is that smart ventures like ComplyAdvantage are attacking it.

More on other Innovator winners on our website and in next week’s issue.