Bermuda-based technology start-up Trunomi wants to put people — rather than corporations — in control of their own personal data.

In pursuing this vision, the firm has already created technology solutions that will make people’s dealings with financial institutions much smoother for both sides.

The company’s TruMobile app allows users to store document sets of personal identity information (Pii) and easily share it with institutions such as banks when necessary.

The technology was initially developed for the financial services industry, but it could be applied much more broadly, according to Trunomi’s founder and chief executive officer Stuart Lacey.

Speaking with The Royal Gazette in his office in New Venture House, on Mill Creek Road, Mr Lacey said his team had worked with financial institutions through the development of the app, and was now “coming to market with clients ready”.

For regulated entities such as banks, who need to demand a batch of paper documents such as passports and utility bills, to verify identities, the TruMobile app will relieve some of the burden of Know Your Customer rules.

For their customers, the ability to allow a chosen party access to their digital data sets will make something like opening a bank account much easier than it is typically today.

Mr Lacey described Trunomi’s concept as the creation of a “verification registry for identification”. The paperwork, man hours and duplication involved in taking on a new customer was time-consuming and expensive, he added.

“AML [Anti money-laundering rules] and KYC cost financial institutions about $40 billion and these expenses are growing at a rate of 12 per cent a year,” Mr Lacey, who is the spouse of a Bermudian, said. “When you’re looking at manual work and dealing with papers, you’re going to get errors and that leads to the risk of fines.”

Banks had paid out billions in such fines, while also suffering damage to their reputations, he said.

Trunomi’s TruHub is described as “an enterprise solution for banks and other regulated entities that leverages cloud-based sharing to remove large-scale duplication and inefficiencies from the customer on-boarding process”. TruHub and TruMobile are protected by multiple patents.

Mr Lacey said the digitised data sets came with a full audit trail and could thus be regarded as verified.

Trunomi claims that TruHub helps banks to go through the process of signing up a new customer 500 per cent faster at 20 per cent of the cost of the current manual process.

The Trunomi CEO said his work has gone down well with the financial services industry. As a former managing director of a global financial services firm, a certified compliance officer and money laundering reporting officer, he is well aware of the industry’s challenges.

Trunomi is a Bermuda-headquartered company with offices in Silicon Valley and Ireland. It has enjoyed substantial support for its work. A round of financing from angel investors earlier this year was oversubscribed within 13 days. The firm’s backers include a private-equity fund and KPMG Bermuda Holdings, as well as other investors — many of them based in Bermuda, Mr Lacey said.

The company held its official launch at the Money 20/20 event in Las Vegas earlier this month.

Bermuda-based Mitsubishi UFJ Fund Services (MUFJ), which has worked with Trunomi as a co-development partner, believes the company can have a big impact.

“TruMobile’s ability to connect, engage and securely enable customers to easily share their KYC document sets is a game-changer for our industry,” Tim Calveley, MUFJ’s deputy CEO, said.

The solid financial backing leaves Trunomi poised to expand its services to cover other regulated industries.

Healthcare is one area being looked at by the firm. For example, having your medical records in your own digital vault, available to be released at the press of a button, would help greatly with a transfer to a different doctor or when getting sick overseas, Mr Lacey said.

Taking the vision further, Mr Lacey sees the development of a trend in which sovereignty over personal data will move increasingly away from corporations to consumers themselves. The proliferation in online communications and transactions has created an environment rich for data mining opportunities for companies such as Facebook and Google. These corporations can sell anonymised information about the online activities of their users to marketing companies.

“Consumer awareness of this will grow,” Mr Lacey said. “The tide is turning and the nature of privacy will change. Privacy is dead, long live privacy. There will be a new paradigm.”

The change will bring Trunomi’s services to the fore and the company aims to provide a global standard to meet the emerging demands. “We created TruMobile to empower consumers to manage and protect their own Pii,” Mr Lacey said. “By letting them select the organisations with which they share personal data, banks and other regulated entities gain fast access to the information they need and can offer an improved service.”

Some day, empowered consumers may be able to release some or all of their own personal data direct to marketers or vendors, at the push of a button, for money or to get customised service.

Trunomi has a team of around 30 people, most of them employed on a consultancy basis, working on the development of its technology in line with its vision.