Led by founders David Crack and Lisa Pilkington, CDD Services Ltd is a group of technology, HR, banking, compliance, academic and former law enforcement specialists. Based in Manchester, the company is the latest UK tech specialist to decide to become a member of the Think Digital Partners ID Directory, and last week we sat down with its Commercial Director, Paul Sandelands, to find out more.
So what is CDD Services all about?
CDD Services is an established family business, based in the North West. Over the last 15 years we have acted as a consultancy delivering global leadership development to blue chip companies worldwide, as well as KYC (know your customer), Identity, fraud prevention and financial crime credit risk consultancy to global financial institutions.
In 2018 we applied our combined expertise to creating our RegTech proposition, Spotlite, which is a complete identity and compliance management system including Android and Apple Apps. Spotlite is cloud based and combines biometrics, AI, Machine Learning, CRM, blockchain and ‘big data’ to ensure brand policies and regulations are applied across multiple jurisdictions.
Great. Can you now tell us about your specific value proposition – how do you help a customer? What sort of problems do you tend to get called in to help with?
Spotlite works by applying policy and regulatory checks to both businesses and individuals when they are on-boarded: common problems we are asked to support are things like ID document capture, validation, anti-impersonation and KYC for areas like Right to Work, or Right to Rent.
Spotlite can also monitor ongoing transactions and interactions to ensure compliance, trusted interaction and help gain a deeper understanding of possible safeguarding risks to citizens and the community. We also provide a citizen portal that supports GDPR transparency and data control.
Do you have any named customers or case studies on your website we could link to to find out more?
We are working with a mental health tech team at https://depresson.co.uk/ on an app designed by sufferers to help sufferers, where Spotlite and another service we offer, SafeGuarden, is powering a safe and trusted environment that removes trolls and toxicity from social community forums whilst safeguarding members and their elective anonymity.
What is your Digital Identity story, in a sentence, Paul? Why would a buyer need to work with you now?
At the heart of our technology is a Data Trust that holds an individual’s data, identity and biometric demographic information in trust, and entirely under an individual’s control with real-time consent. That’s going to reduce the GDPR burden on an organisation whilst ensuring compliance by design.
Do you have a particular public sector angle you also want to highlight?
We are working on a discreet project to help deliver “Meaningful Identity” benefiting from the flexible configurability of Spotlite, such that we can support the provision of a Single Citizen view across multiple agency and support services legacy systems. This will help our client identify and enable more transparent, consistent and measurable Safeguarding support for vulnerable groups.
Finally, if we come back in 12 months from now to refresh your profile in the Directory, what would you like to be able to say you’d achieved or progressed in the intervening time?
I would like to be able to say that our SafeGuarden Data Trust is firmly established – and that it is making a positive social difference by providing a meaningful Identity that is protecting lives, as well as people’s data.
Very interesting, Mr Sandelands, and thanks for your time today. Good luck!
