You’ve got leads. You’ve got intent. You’ve got a strong offer.
And yet, customers aren’t activating.
Marketing’s generating pipeline. Sales is closing deals. But when the dust settles, the revenue doesn’t quite land on time. Something’s holding it up.
More often than not, that something is identity.
Identity Is a Revenue Lever, Not Just a Step
It used to be safe to think of Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) as something for IT to worry about. Or something the compliance team monitored from afar. It was infrastructure. Plumbing. Background noise.
That’s no longer the case.
Today, identity is not a backend function. It’s the first real test of your customer experience. And it’s either accelerating your revenue or silently choking it.
Why? Because CIAM determines how fast a lead becomes a billable customer.
When identity is done well, onboarding flows. Customers sign up quickly. Trust is established. The account is activated. Revenue is realised.
When identity is clunky? That same lead gets stuck. Or worse: drops off completely.
Why Onboarding Is a Commercial Metric
For many financial institutions, especially those serving SMEs, the bottleneck is onboarding, not sales.
Legacy processes, manual verifications, document uploads, and slow identity checks have made B2B customer onboarding unnecessarily hard. While fintech challengers are touting same-day activation, traditional banks are still quoting 90 to 120 days to fully onboard a corporate client.
It’s slow. And it’s costly. Revenue from these clients is delayed. Forecasts are missed. CAC rises. NPS suffers.
And yet, many Heads of Revenue are not tracking onboarding time.
It’s often owned by compliance or operations, disconnected from the growth conversation.
That’s a miss.
Because onboarding is where many good leads go to die.
The Silent Killer: Identity Friction
According to research commissioned by TrueLayer and YouGov, 40% of financial services customers abandon onboarding due to friction, particularly at the identity verification stage.
Common culprits include:
- Asking for too much information up front
- Poor mobile UX
- Long waits for manual verification
- Repetition of information already provided
- No real-time feedback on progress
These things don’t just annoy your customers. They waste your acquisition budget.
Consider this: you’ve already paid to acquire that lead. Maybe $150, maybe $500, depending on your channel. You’ve moved them through the funnel. Then they hit identity friction and bounce.
It’s a missed opportunity. And that’s money down the drain.
You Can’t Optimise CAC If Identity Is Bleeding Conversion
Let’s talk numbers.
If you’re running a digital growth campaign with a 5% conversion rate from ad to sign-up, and 40% of those sign-ups drop off at onboarding, your actual CAC is 66% higher than it appears on paper.
You’re acquiring fewer real customers than you think.
Marketing metrics lie when identity fails.
And if you’re forecasting revenue based on leads, but onboarding lags or stalls, you’re going to miss those targets.
The fix? Make CIAM part of your revenue infrastructure.
What Top Revenue Leaders Are Doing Differently
Across fintech, lending, digital banking, and payments, a new pattern is emerging.
Revenue leaders are leaning into identity. They’re building tighter partnerships with security and compliance. And they’re treating onboarding as a growth lever.
Here’s what they’re doing:
- Building conversion-optimised identity flows
They bring Marketing and Product into the design of onboarding journeys, not just Compliance.
Flows are tested. Language and messaging is clear. Mobile experience is polished.
Every interaction is optimised to reduce friction and boost conversion.
- Using progressive onboarding
They don’t ask for everything at once.
Basic info first. Risk-based identity checks later.
This speeds up initial activation and lets the customer build momentum.
- Segmenting risk and adapting checks accordingly
A low-risk local business shouldn’t have to jump through the same hoops as a complex offshore entity.
Modern CIAM systems adjust verification steps dynamically, based on real-time signals.
- Implementing real-time verification
They use tools like biometrics, document liveness detection, and data APIs to validate IDs instantly.
- Tracking identity as a growth metric
They monitor onboarding completion rate, time-to-activation, and drop-off points like any other part of the sales funnel.
Third-Party Case Study: How One Company Cut Rejection Rates by More Than Half
A fast-growing trading platform was struggling with onboarding bottlenecks.
Their manual ID checks were flagging a large percentage of applicants. Some legitimate, some fraudulent.
The result? Poor conversion, high support volume, and user frustration.
After integrating biometric verification and liveness detection through a global specialist in digital identity and fraud prevention, the company saw rejection rates drop from 40% to 18%, without sacrificing fraud detection accuracy.
That’s a 55% reduction in false positives. Which means more customers got activated. Faster.
That’s revenue, recovered.
From Time-to-Verify to Time-to-Value
When we think about identity, we don’t just think about verifying someone. We also think about how long it takes to get them to value.
If a customer signs up but can’t use the product for three days, your CAC stays the same… but your LTV just got shorter.
Worse: if onboarding is too slow, they’ll never activate at all.
This is particularly critical in B2B finance, where customer intent is high, but patience is low.
Your prospect is a CFO, COO, or business owner. They need your product to work. Now.
The longer your identity flow takes, the more likely they are to switch to a competitor.
Speed to trust = speed to revenue.
What to Look for in a Modern CIAM Platform
Whether you’re evaluating new tools or auditing your current setup, here’s what to prioritise:
Real-time identity verification
Liveness detection, biometric matching, and database validation should happen in seconds, not hours.
Risk-based orchestration
The system should adjust the onboarding flow based on the customer’s risk profile.
Built-in analytics
You need visibility into conversion rates, drop-off points, and approval metrics so you can optimise.
Regulatory alignment
In Australia, compliance with DVS, ASIC, ABN, AML/CTF, and the Privacy Act is non-negotiable. Your provider must support this out of the box.
Low-code flexibility
Your teams should be able to tweak onboarding journeys without waiting weeks for engineering cycles.
If your current platform doesn’t do these things? It’s holding your revenue back.
How ThunderLabs Helps: Identity Without the Friction
ThunderLabs is Okta’s premier Australian partner for Customer Identity Cloud, powered by Auth0.
We specialise in helping financial services leaders build revenue-ready onboarding journeys, fast.
Here’s how we help Heads of Revenue win:
✅ Accelerate onboarding. We design flows that cut time-to-activation by up to X%
✅ Boost conversion. By reducing identity friction, we help increase onboarding completion rates
✅ Increase revenue predictability. Shorter time-to-value improves forecasting and cash flow
✅ Support compliance. Fully aligned with Australian regulatory standards
✅ Deliver fast. We implement in weeks, not quarters
Our CIAM expertise helps your business move faster without compromising on trust, risk, or security.
We’ve done it for lenders, banks, fintechs, and platforms across the country.
And we can do it for you.
If You Want Growth, Start Where the Journey Begins
You’re doing the work. You’ve got the leads. The demand is there.
But if identity is slow, outdated, or too rigid, it’s blocking revenue.
You’re not just losing customers.
You’re delaying the ones you do acquire.
And that delay shows up in your numbers.
Forget checking boxes. Modern CIAM is about creating momentum.
It’s how you get a customer from “yes” to “live” without losing the deal to friction or fatigue.
The growth teams that win in 2025 will be the ones that treat identity not as infrastructure, but as infrastructure for revenue.
Want Faster Onboarding and Smoother Revenue?
Let’s fix your identity funnel.
Book a Discovery Call with us.
We’ll review your current CIAM setup, show you where you’re losing revenue, and map a better way forward.
Speed to trust starts here.
