IDology / GBG

Type: Identity-verification and fraud-prevention provider, known for knowledge-based authentication and identity data checks.
Legal history: GBG (GB Group plc) agreed on February 11, 2019 to buy IDology for $300 million in cash.
Pandemic role: Blueacorn PPP identity-verification vendor. It was the stricter knowledge-based check that Blueacorn moved into a secondary role in April 2021.
Current status: IDology is GBG's go-to-market brand in the Americas, combined with Acuant.

Pandemic-role map

Reader shorthand: stricter knowledge-based identity check in Blueacorn's PPP stack.
What IDology did for applicants: asked multiple-choice questions built from an applicant's Social Security information, and flagged applicants who could not answer them.
What IDology sold to other companies: identity verification, fraud prevention and knowledge-based authentication, led by its ExpectID products.
Where responsibility sat: Blueacorn chose when to use IDology and when to route applicants elsewhere. The lenders of record held the SBA lender relationship.
Pandemic-relief tension: the House report says IDology flagged so many applicants that Blueacorn made Onfido its primary identity check.

Before the pandemic

IDology was based in Atlanta. John Dancu joined as president and CEO in January 2006, and at the 2019 sale he said the company had provided "multi-layered identity verification" for fifteen years. When GBG announced the deal, it said IDology had 2018 revenue of $38.2 million, growing at a compound annual rate of 16%, and EBITDA of $16.3 million. U.S. customers made up 99% of its revenue.

GBG, a U.K.-based identity-data company, announced on February 11, 2019 that it had conditionally agreed to buy all of IDology's shares for $300 million (£233 million) in cash. It was the largest of the 11 acquisitions GBG had made since 2011. The two companies already had a commercial partnership, and IDology's senior management stayed on. Three days later IDology announced that One World Identity had named Dancu one of its Top 100 Influencers in Identity for 2019.

During the pandemic

IDology's pandemic role runs through Blueacorn. The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis's December 1, 2022 fintech report, "We Are Not the Fraud Police," lists IDology among the four "commonly used third party software products" Blueacorn relied on, with Plaid, GIACT and Onfido. It describes IDology as software that "used an applicant's social security information to generate a list of multiple-choice questions that only the applicant should be able to answer."

According to the report, Blueacorn started using IDology at the end of March 2021 and found the questions "quite difficult" for many PPP applicants to answer correctly; the tool "flagged a large number of applications as suspicious." From early April 2021 Blueacorn made Onfido its primary identity check "instead of the more rigorous IDology questions or human reviews." Applicants went to IDology only if they failed Onfido or were flagged later in the process. The report places this under a heading about off-the-shelf technology "Weakened to Ensure Higher Loan Approval Rates" and says approving more applicants "would increase Blueacorn's profits." The report's findings concern Blueacorn's choices; it makes no finding against IDology.

After the pandemic

GBG bought Acuant, a U.S. identity-verification company, in November 2021. In its fiscal 2022 results GBG said its Acuant and IDology teams had combined to form "the largest pure-play identity verification provider in the US." Christina Luttrell, IDology's chief operating officer and a 13-year employee, succeeded Dancu as chief executive. The announcement said Dancu had led the company for 15 years and would stay on as an adviser. By GBG's own account, in 2023 it finished combining its two U.S. businesses, with GBG IDology as its brand in the Americas.

Source notes

Blueacorn

Pandemic-role map

Before the pandemic

During the pandemic

After the pandemic

Source notes

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