Regula has announced the launch of a new study, which highlights the new possible ways in which banks and fintechs plan to verify in 2026.
Following this announcement, Regula’s report, which is entitled `What’s Reshaping IDV in Banking & Fintech: 2026 Trends and Predictions`, reveals that biometric verification has become the most attacked point in the digital identity verification (IDV) process across financial institutions and organisations.
In addition, new global data shows that at least three in ten financial companies are hit by impersonation fraud, driving a shift toward more robust identity verification. According to survey data from organisations in several regions around the globe, including the US, UAE, Germany, and Singapore, at least three in ten banks and fintechs report biometric verification as the stage most frequently targeted by fraudsters, which is ahead of document checks or other onboarding steps.
Furthermore, many of these incidents also involve AI-generated media, including deepfakes, AI-manipulated selfies, and synthetic identities that were developed in order to impersonate legitimate users during the process of face-matching or liveness-detection checks. With this in mind, and because biometric verification relies on visual or behavioral data captured from a camera or microphone, it is especially vulnerable to injected or replayed digital content.
AI-based fraudulent activities triggering a new model of identity verification
Regula’s report was developed in order to draw on insights from fraud-prevention, compliance, and risk-management professionals across major financial hubs. It represents a part of `The Future of Identity Verification: 5 Threats and 5 Opportunities`, a global survey commissioned by Regula and conducted by Censuswide covering enterprises in the banking, fintech, aviation, healthcare, telecom, and crypto sectors. The study explores the manner in which companies are reallocating budgets, addressing deepfake-driven fraud, as well as building cohesive identity frameworks to support growth and compliance.
According to the official press release, the overall surge in AI-powered attacks is prompting banks and financial institutions to rethink the manner in which they structure IDV systems. With this in mind, nearly half of respondents now point to orchestrated verification workflows, which were developed in order to connect document checks, biometrics, and risk analytics into one adaptive system, as the most effective way to counter emerging fraud tactics and attacks. At the same time, rather than layering more point solutions, financial institutions are set to focus on moving toward integrated, intelligent IDV platforms, capable of analysing multiple signals simultaneously and escalating only ambiguous cases for human review. This structure is expected to detect injected or synthetic content earlier, while easing one of the sector’s persistent challenges, staff shortage, as well.
Moreover, with more than 75% of banks and financial institutions citing insufficient staffing for fraud-prevention tasks, the process of orchestration is both a technological and operational necessity. Through the initiative of automating repetitive checks and routing complex cases intelligently, organisations will be given the possibility to handle higher verification volumes without expanding teams, while also focusing on maintaining accuracy, compliance, and speed within a single workflow.
In addition, Regula’s findings also highlight a strategic shift, as the process of identity verification is evolving from a regulatory requirement into a competitive capability. With this in mind, as fraud prevention is currently a top organisational priority for 71% of banks and 75% of fintechs, linking IDV investment directly to customer trust and retention is a must. Metrics such as false-negative rates (legitimate users and customers being mistakenly blocked) are increasingly tracked alongside compliance and chargeback indicators, an initiative that is currently reflecting a broader focus on user experience and accuracy.
