President and CEO of Virtual StrongBox, Ron Daly, is building Virtual StrongBox to help consumers store and exchange sensitive information in a simple, secure, and seamless fashion with financial institutions.
When it comes to security – Ron Daly knows his stuff as his background includes experience within a three-letter government agency. He also has an extensive understanding of the financial services industry’s inner workings as his first company DigitalMailer serviced banks, credit unions, and the like for 16 years.
This blend of expertise gives Daly a unique set of skills and led him to found his second company – Virtual StrongBox.
DigitalMailer – started in the late 90s – offered financial institutions email marketing services and ways in which to store electronic statements. Daly mentions, “in doing all this [banking] communications, we had servers sitting around with nothing do all month – statements came out once a month. So we were saying – ‘How can we create a secure cloud that is sitting next to the documents that my bank is giving me?’ A bank could push information out all the time, but they couldn’t pull information.
“The cloud that existed [early on] banks, credit unions, and insurance companies couldn’t put personal information out there the way they were configured. There was no privacy in the cloud. So we started down the path of, ‘how do we create a cloud with total information privacy and protection?’”
The early thinking was – they could connect security with not only the convenience the cloud provided, but also with the convenience the consumer wanted. In combination with this, they could also provide workflow transformation for companies – so out sprung Virtual StrongBox.
To date, Daly and his team have four patents granted supporting Virtual StrongBox’s technology – mostly around how data is stored on the cloud and how that data is handled across a private cloud.
Daly simplifies the technology with an example, “to the consumer – we are online safe deposit box. It’s the place where you can store stuff that you shouldn’t be storing in DropBox or Box or even in your desk.”
Let’s say you are applying for a mortgage in the hopes of buying a home in that neighborhood that you love. Your loan officer will need several documents from you and most will contain sensitive information – social security number, tax history, credit details, etc. In many cases, these documents are submitted by email, scan, or even fax, and any of this information, if compromised, could result in a stolen identity.
However, if your bank generating the loan offered a Virtual StrongBox, you could proactively store those documents electronically in your personal StrongBox to then simply and securely transfer specific pieces of information to your loan officer.
As life circumstances change, consumers will need to supply this same, private information for other products – opening a wealth management account, estate planning, filing insurance claims, creating a will, etc.
“So Virtual StrongBox is that translator in the middle as a secure customer engagement platform.
“This is a place [where] you can store your tax returns, will, passports, credit card information, etc. The way we have set it up is – no one else can see [your information]. You can use it and I can’t see it, our employees can’t see it, the bank that provides it to you can’t see it – only you have the keys to actually get into that StrongBox.
“We protect the information from inside and out. With that protection we can design systems from not inside-out – the old way where the CIO picks how you do business with [an] organization – it’s the outside-in – how does the consumer want to do business with [an organization]. The consumer gets to drive the engagement.
“We look for ways to disrupt very consumer unfriendly processes.” Daly and his team can customize solutions for workflow issues – anything from a mortgage lending process to a payment dispute process, even to a merchant onboarding process.”
From an enterprise standpoint, Virtual StrongBox’s technology is very adaptable and is effectively plug-and-play. And the requirements of internal IT resources is extremely minimal. “We always created the software to be able to be put on [our] cloud or on your cloud. So the differentiator that [we] have between Box and DropBox is it’s our cloud or yours.”
Virtual StrongBox’s customer engagement platform doesn’t apply only to financial institutions or in the FinTech space, but also the RegTech, InsuranceTech, and HealthTech markets. “The verticals have the exact same problems – how [to] onboard a customer, exchange information to or from a customer, streamline a process that is very painful to a customer, help my employees to work differently?”
Daly admits, “I started with FinTech mostly because that’s where I grew up and have experience working inside of financial institutions.” But that focused start has paid off as Virtual StrongBox was recently selected as a finalist for a 2017 Blue Diamond Award.
