Catch up with Chris Hooper, Director of Brand at Veriff

You’ve been with the company for a while now. Tell us about your journey here at Veriff.

We often joke that time at Veriff is like dog years versus human years, because so much happens so quickly! That has definitely been the case for me in my time here. I have seen my role and the marketing team as a whole shift so much as the needs of the business change as we scale and grow. It has been really exciting to be part of and I feel like I have learnt so much about what it takes to build a brand in challenging business conditions.

What keeps you sharp at work and how do you recharge? 

I think what keeps me sharpest at work is talking to people - and that means my colleagues in marketing and the GTM team, folks from other teams outside of my own, and our customers. There are new ideas everywhere and the more we talk the more we discover them. When it comes to recharging, it is literally anything that switches my brain off. This could be walking out in the woods with my dog, swimming, reading, anything!

How has Veriff’s content and storytelling evolved since you joined?

I would say the biggest evolution in Veriff’s content and storytelling has been in giving a better platform to our specialists to display their expertise. From the brand research we have conducted, and the conversations I have with customers, it is clear that the market appreciates our thought leadership more than that of our competitors, because it is interesting, engaging and useful to their daily lives. That’s all because of the thought leaders within our business constantly coming up with world-class ideas - all I have done is help to better communicate and amplify those ideas to our audience.

How would you characterize the Veriff brand? Specifically, how does it reflect trust, security, and leadership in identity verification services?

Veriff’s brand is still in its infancy and there is so much still to do. But a lot of what goes into establishing a brand is basically down to repetition. If you bang the drum around certain themes or subjects often enough then you soon start to get recognised for them. By constantly exploring topics around fraud prevention, for example, we are able to take our audiences on a journey with us and can cement in their minds the idea that Veriff is a trusted leader in this space. When I talk to customers now they always tell me about how they associate us with trust, safety for them and their users, and being super innovative - that is how I know our brand activities are working.

Which Veriff campaign, case study, or thought leadership piece are you most proud of, and why?

There have been so many and every piece of thought leadership and customer story uncovers something new. I would give a shout out here to our annual Fraud Report. It consistently performs so well as an asset that it’s hard not to be proud of it, and I also like that it is the summation of work from a number of teams across Veriff. But there is one customer story that sticks in my mind and I think it’s special to me because it was the first one I did at Veriff. It was with a customer called Vantage Recreational Finance - a marine lender in the US - and it was the first one we had where the customer had actually been able to quantify the value Veriff had brought to them. In short, the customer told us that since deploying our solution we had saved them $750,000 that they would have lost to fraud. That quote mentioning that figure was used in virtually all of our content assets for about two years after, and still is now actually, which goes to show how important it was to be able to demonstrate our value in a financially understandable way like that.

Which specific topics resonate most with your audience and have the greatest impact on the industry?

The main objective of our content is to demonstrate that we understand the problems that our customers and prospects are facing - namely around fraud, compliance, onboarding more customers, etc. If we do that, and demonstrate our expertise and knowledge on these subjects in the process, then, and only then, do we earn the right to talk to them about why our products are the solution to those problems. The subjects that have resonated most with our audience, then, are those that best align with the issues they are facing in their day-to-day work lives.

What are the key emerging trends and themes in the industry? 

AI is a subject that comes up in every bit of research we do, every report we write, every podcast we produce - it’s the big mega-trend that is re-defining how we as humans exist in the world, and the filter through into fraud and fraud prevention is clear for all of us to see. I am in equal parts terrified and excited about what AI will bring to our business. I can see AI agents and well-trained LLMs transforming our services and how we work, but I can also see the threat that AI can bring to our customers. And I think, too, that AI will transform the very concept of identity. When each of us has an AI-powered digital double replying to emails, attending meetings, and doing other manual tasks for us, then there arises a question of whether that digital double should share my identity or have one unique to itself - and how do we verify the identity of an individual who does not exist in the way we have historically thought of an individual existing? Big questions!

And now to the fun bits.

If you could pick any person or character, real or fictional, to do our identity verification (IDV), who would it be?

I read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories when I was a kid, so I’d choose him. He’d make a good fraud-fighter. We would have to keep him off the opium, though, or he may fall foul of our HR policies!

What’s an interesting or surprising fact about you?

I was once urinated on by a full-grown adult lion. 🦁 True story. 

What’s your favourite podcast?

Veriff Voices, of course. As far as I am concerned, there are no other podcasts!