Why financial services needs a new way to measure customer identity

Why financial services needs a new way to measure customer identity

In financial services, identity touches everything. It determines how customers open accounts, how they log in, how fraudsters are stopped, and how regulators evaluate your controls. Yet most institutions still track CIAM success the wrong way.

Instead of tying customer identity to financial outcomes, they measure technical health: API calls, uptime percentages, or latency. Those numbers matter to IT, but they don’t help when your board asks:

• How much did we reduce fraud losses this quarter?
  
• How much did we cut from operating costs?
  
• How many more customers completed account opening?

The Problem With Current CIAM Metrics

Most financial services organizations struggle to quantify the business impact of customer identity. Fraud losses, churn, compliance costs, and onboarding abandonment all sit on different dashboards and rarely connect back to identity decisions.

The cost of this gap is huge:

• $40 billion in projected U.S. fraud losses by 2027
  
• 60–68% abandonment of digital account openings
  
• 20–50% of help desk calls tied to password resets, each costing about $70
  

This disconnect creates two problems:

1. Identity leaders struggle to make the case for new investment.
   
2. Executives underestimate how much identity already impacts the bottom line.

The Shift: From Tech KPIs to Business Outcomes

Forward-looking banks, credit unions, and insurers are reframing CIAM around the metrics that actually resonate with the C-suite. Below are some of the ways you can measure impact.

These are only a sample of the metrics that matter. The bigger issue is that most financial services leaders know identity impacts fraud, cost and growth but they lack a clear framework to prove it. 

That’s why we created the Customer Identity Metrics Mind Map for Financial Services. It gives you a framework that: 

• Shows which metrics to track
  
• Explains how they tie to financial outcomes
  
• Helps you speak the same language as your board and regulators

Ready to Reframe CIAM at Your Institution?

Identity is about more than logging in. It’s about protecting revenue, cutting costs, accelerating digital growth, and staying compliant. The real question is whether you’re measuring it in a way that your CFO, CRO, and regulators will value.

Download the Customer Identity Metrics Mind Map for Financial Services to see which metrics matter most and how to connect CIAM to the business outcomes your board cares about.

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