Identity Theft as Part of Duty of Care

Generali identity and digital protection services president & COO Paige Schaffer discusses:

• Why corporate travelers face a higher risk of identity theft
• Ways to provide protection
• Global growth plans

For travel managers, duty-of-care conversations usually center on vetting suppliers and managing employees during crises. Paige Schaffer, president and COO of Generali Global Assistance's identity and digital protection services unit, would like to add identity theft to that list of topics. The company, which recently rebranded from Europ Assistance USA, wants to get identity protection tools into the hands of corporate travelers, who face a higher risk of identity theft than the average employee, by selling its products to corporate travel suppliers like travel management companies, which then resell to their clients, or by selling directly to employers. She spoke to BTN senior editor Michael B. Baker about the Iris OnWatch identity protection program her unit launched this summer—which offers software and services to prevent identity theft, monitoring to detect it and alerts and resolution tools should identity theft occur—and why the company is targeting the travel industry.

BTN: What's the correlation between identity theft protection and corporate travel?

Schaffer: There's opportunity in the travel segment, especially when you look at the data points of people being two to four times more likely to lose their identity when they're traveling, with boarding passes and Wi-Fi and hotel keys. We have been selling [identity theft protection] since 2003, so we were probably the first in the United States to offer B-to-B-to-C identity services. Our product is agnostic. We are already handling a mega travel management company, and they are using it and selling it on their leisure side of the business. Whether it's a TMC or a hotel chain or a technology company, it's really about increasing that brand loyalty. We essentially give a net cost and they can market it. They may already have a business travel risk product but may see identity theft and say, that's interesting, so it's also an opportunity to bring business to them. Corporate travel agents can sell it just like they're selling travel insurance, and groups and meetings can use it. There's also an opportunity for the GDSs and larger distribution channels. You have this embedded with your product from the get-go, and it covers the masses of your product base. We had the ability to offer it if you wanted to pay for it for your customers. Maybe you have a bunch of high-net-worth customers and it's included in your luxury trip, or you have your top 100 clients of Microsoft or Google or whomever, so we offer the ability to embed it and it's paid for and you can sell it on a voluntary basis.

BTN: Could a corporate travel program offer it directly to travelers?

Schaffer: We can sell to any business. A portal would be generated with their logo on it, but most likely, for some of these smaller companies, we have just a generic portal that has our Iris logo on it, and they can point people to that. We're also talking to one of the large TMCs that has a loyalty division, so we have the ability to transact using loyalty points, if that was something that was needed.

BTN: Why would a traveler want this on top of corporate card protections or other systems already in place?

Schaffer: We're not a data-breach company. Javelin just put out a report that said consumers are starting to get hip to the fact that [employers] are doing [data-breach protection] just to check it off from the compliance and regulations list. What you get is a low-cost, high-volume center that doesn't know much about identity theft. We're much more proactive risk mitigation. [For] companies that consider cyber liability policies, having [Iris OnWatch] in place mitigates the risk for those policies and sometimes gets them lower rates. The anti-phishing and anti-keystroke is critical insurance, and consumers are asking for it. By the end of the year, we'll probably launch a smartphone protection and an e-vault, a highly protected place to put your information.

BTN: The corporate travel industry already is talking a lot about duty of care. Does Generali consider its product to fall under that umbrella?

Schaffer: It's an easy way to characterize it for this audience. It is a duty of care but a different kind of risk that happens mostly when people travel. It doesn't prevent terrorism or tell you necessarily where your employees are, but [identity theft] is a legit, real risk.

BTN: Could an employer face any sort of legal liability if an employee's identity was stolen while on a business trip?

Schaffer: I don't think anyone has looked at it that way yet. It goes to what you have to do and what's right to do. The challenge is, you could have a traveler traveling, and they leave the company six months later, and it's hard to prove that your identity was stolen because you were on that trip. [Proactive identity theft protection] just makes good, proactive sense for your employees. More employers are going to get a bad rap for after-the-fact data breaches and [for] just giving customers and [their] employees the basic level because they have to.

BTN: Do you plan to expand your platform beyond the United States?

Schaffer: We're launching in Canada at the end of the year, and we have very serious interest [from employers] in South Africa and India after that, and we'll launch in Europe, as well. We want to get it right with Canada, with the multiple currencies and translation, and we feel like we'll be the first true global provider.