Is it important to know our client face to face?

To answer, we must ask ourselves some previous questions: what percentage of your business is done in a non-face-to-face way? How much of your activity is done online or through any other channel that can facilitate anonymity? So, we need to know the proportion and characteristics of customers that we don’t meet face-to-face or that we don’t verify with a robust electronic identification and verification system and what means they use to communicate with us. We should opt for face-to-face relationships and more secure verification systems (though certainly not 100%). Failure to do so, the medium used acquires significant importance in terms of risk (greater anonymity implies greater risk). A text message is more anonymous than a phone call and this is more anonymous than a video call. As for the latter, it is worth remembering the existence of video impersonation using artificial intelligence (“deep fakes”). 

So, the final answer seems pretty obvious: yes, because certainly the face-to-face relationship helps minimize risks. Given the above and considering that not everyone has the possibility of having a solid electronic identification and verification system, it makes us reaffirm that the old art of face-to-face conversation and its subtleties, is still a powerful tool.