Embracing Converged Identity and Access Management for All Access Needs

The financial services industry continues to evolve rapidly, putting increasing pressure on providers to balance agility, security, and compliance in a way that protects both internal (workforce) and external (partner, contractor, third-party provider (TPP)) access. The stakes are particularly high across workforce and business-to-business (B2B) access journeys as financial providers face a surge in cyber threats, stringent regulatory requirements, and an ever-expanding partner ecosystem. With the rise of hybrid work environments and the increasing reliance on third-party vendors, securing access to critical financial data has become more complex than ever before. Converged identity and access management (IAM) has now become a strategic asset in the financial services industry.

Many financial service providers continue to rely on disjointed and home-grown legacy IAM solutions to secure their workforce and B2B access. Most legacy IAM infrastructure relies on weak credentials, manual access provisioning, and fragmented identity governance and administration (IGA) capabilities that create vulnerabilities exploited by cybercriminals through phishing, credential stuffing, and other attacks. To add to this, financial service providers are finding themselves spending more time, effort, and money on managing a growing number of third-party vendors and external partners who need access to sensitive systems and data, increasing the risk of unauthorized access and dampened digital agility.

Addressing these challenges requires a modernized approach to the workforce and B2B IAM — one that automates identity lifecycle management, strengthens security through adaptive controls, and ensures seamless access for internal employees and external partners.

The Ping Identity Platform provides leading financial service providers with a converged approach to identity access, governance, and management, enabling them to meet the demands for secure, streamlined, and scalable access — today and into the future.

1: Modernize Workforce Access Management

Delivering seamless workforce access experiences while maintaining robust security has become a tough balancing act for many financial service providers. Traditional workforce access management solutions are often fragmented and lack the agility needed to handle the complexities of today's hybrid work environments. As the distributed workforce continues to operate from multiple locations while using many devices to access applications, data, and legacy systems, outdated IAM infrastructure struggles to keep pace. Increasing over-reliance on weak credentials and passwords not only leads to operational inefficiencies but also leaves these very financial service providers vulnerable to unauthorized access, account takeover attacks, and AI-driven impersonation compromise.

In addition to these security risks, the growing complexity of managing workforce access across multiple platforms and environments poses significant challenges to productivity, access provisioning, as well as the costs associated with maintaining a patchwork of disparate IAM solutions. Without a centralized approach to access management, IT teams are burdened with the manual work of provisioning, de-provisioning, and managing access controls, all while trying to maintain security consistency across on-premise, cloud, and hybrid environments. This increases the risk of human error, operational bottlenecks, and inconsistent security policies, particularly as financial providers grow and scale their operations.

Strengthen Security and Deliver Enhanced Workforce Access Experiences

The converged Ping Identity Platform gives leading financial service providers all the capabilities, tools, and third-party integrations to automate and streamline the entire access management lifecycle. By leveraging single sign-on (SSO), adaptive multi-factor authentication (MFA), policy-based access control (PBAC), FIDO2, and passkey passwordless, and identity verification together with third-party extensibility, financial service providers can drastically reduce their reliance on weak credentials, minimize the risk of breaches, and ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive systems and data.

The converged platform approach also helps financial service providers improve operational efficiencies by empowering the workforce with the ability to leverage comprehensive authentication and access self-service capabilities, negating the need to engage with IT support desks. This reduces the volume of IT support tickets, freeing up IT staff to focus on more strategic initiatives. By moving to a converged IAM platform, financial service providers can ensure that Zero Trust security policies are consistently enforced across all deployment environments, all devices, and all workforce access touchpoints.

Ping Identity works with leading financial service providers and serves:

• 9 out of 9 largest retail banks in the U.S.
• 7 of the CMA9 banks in the U.K.

2: Modernize B2B Access Management

In the financial services industry, managing how external users like partners, contractors, and TPPs gain access to applications, data, and legacy systems is becoming an increasingly complex and critical challenge. As financial service providers increasingly rely on these external entities to deliver essential services, they must grant access to sensitive systems and data without compromising security. However, legacy access management infrastructure often falls short when it comes to managing third-party access, creating the risk of unauthorized access and credential compromise.

• 54% of organizations have experienced third-party attacks or security breaches.
• 15% of all breaches globally have involved a third-party supply chain issue.³

The complexities of managing B2B relationships extend beyond simple access provisioning. Financial service providers must ensure that third-party access adheres to stringent compliance requirements, including data protection regulations like GDPR. Without adequate controls in place, providers risk failing audits or incurring penalties for non-compliance. The growing number of external users across an increasingly complex internal and external ecosystem — driven by the rapid pace of M&A activity in the industry — makes delegated authorization and administrative access increasingly complex across organizational and geographical boundaries.

Strengthen Security and Deliver Enhanced B2B Access Experiences

The converged Ping Identity Platform gives leading financial service providers all the capabilities, tools, and third-party integrations to streamline the end-to-end access management lifecycle, in a similar fashion to workforce access. In addition to this, Ping Identity gives financial service providers the means to manage access and administrative control across a hierarchy of complex intra- and inter-organizational relationships making up the typical industry ecosystem.

Ping Identity's converged platform approach provides real-time visibility into third-party access, enabling administrators to monitor user activities and quickly revoke or adjust access as needed. This level of control helps financial service providers maintain compliance with industry regulations by ensuring that access is continuously aligned with internal security policies and external compliance requirements. With these capabilities, financial service providers can confidently scale their B2B ecosystems to enable critical competitive differentiation, while minimizing security risks and ensuring compliance.

Ping Identity helps leading global enterprises secure and enhance their B2B access journeys:

• 45% productivity improvement associated with securing the B2B ecosystem at Maersk.⁴
• 45% cost reduction associated with B2B access modernization at Maersk.⁵

3: Modernize Identity Governance and Administration

In today's heavily regulated financial environment, managing identity governance and compliance is no longer optional — it is a critical component of any institution's risk management strategy. Financial service providers must ensure that only authorized users, whether internal workforce or external users, have access to sensitive systems and data. However, many organizations still rely on manual processes to manage access certifications, provisioning, and de-provisioning, which are not only time-consuming but also prone to human error. These governance gaps can expose institutions to insider threats, data breaches, and regulatory non-compliance, leading to costly fines and reputational damage.

The challenge of managing identity governance is exacerbated by the ever-increasing complexity of the financial services ecosystems. With workforce, partners, contractors, and TPPs all requiring varying levels of access, providers must strike a delicate balance between maintaining operational efficiency and ensuring stringent access controls. In this setting, manual governance processes are no longer scalable, nor robust enough to meet internal and external compliance requirements. Continued reliance on legacy IGA infrastructure not only weakens providers' security posture but also complicates audit processes, making it difficult to demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements such as GDPR and SOX.

Evolve Identity Governance Capabilities and Processes Across All Access Journeys

The converged Ping Identity Platform gives leading financial service providers all the capabilities and tools needed to automate and modernize the end-to-end workforce and B2B identity governance lifecycle. By automating access requests, certifications, and role management, financial providers can significantly reduce the administrative burden on IT teams while ensuring that access is granted and revoked according to predefined security policies and a Zero Trust security posture.

Ping Identity's converged platform approach enables financial service providers to implement least-privileged access policies, ensuring that users only have access to the systems and data they need to perform their jobs. This helps to further reduce the risks associated with insider threats and unauthorized access. This is further augmented with comprehensive reporting capabilities that help providers streamline their audit processes by gaining real-time visibility into access reviews, certifications, and user activities.

Ping Identity helps leading global enterprises modernize their IGA capabilities:

• 60% automation of access requests, revocations, and certifications for a major international financial services institution.
• $3M in cost savings associated with consolidating and modernizing the IGA infrastructure at a major financial services institution.

The Ping Identity Platform in Financial Services

Ping Identity's market-leading converged IAM solutions help leading global enterprises meet all their consumer, workforce, and third-party identity needs using a single unified platform.

Nowhere is this more important than in the financial services industry. Leading financial service providers trust Ping Identity to protect their customers, their mission-critical infrastructure, and their rapidly growing digital ecosystems. Beyond that, Ping Identity helps these very providers mobilize cutting-edge IAM innovation to accelerate their digital transformation investments.

The Ping Identity Platform is purpose-built to support any type of identity across the end-to-end identity lifecycle, provides extensibility across 1,800 third-party biometric, risk management, and identity-proofing technologies, and gives you full flexibility to consume its comprehensive services in self-managed, hybrid, and SaaS settings. This is all orchestrated from a powerful drag-and-drop low-code/no-code engine that helps to accelerate your agility, reduce costs, and accelerate your digital roadmap.

¹ Veronis, 2021 Varonis Data Risk Report for Financial Services

² 2024 Verizon Data Breach report

³ Maersk customer success story

⁴ Maersk customer success story