Covid-19 has accelerated digitalisation across industries, business models, and touchpoints says Frost & Sullivan analysts. As communication and sharing of information move from a physical to digital medium, users must protect access to their identity online using secure, portable, and verifiable credentials in real-time. Therefore, a digital identity system compiling personal information such as name, passport number, health data, and financial information that can be linked to a secure digital device or account will be a critical enabler.

Frost & Sullivan finds that the digital identity management market is expected to register strong growth over the next decade and has the potential to unlock investments worth $80 billion globally by 2030. The public sector, financial services, insurance, and healthcare industries increasingly deploy pilot projects to test the market’s effectiveness and applicability. Some of the growth opportunities expected in this space include blockchain-based decentralized digital identity management, digital identity custodians, and personal cyber insurance.

Another emerging trend due to rapid digitalisation is the compression in value chains, which reduces the number of steps in customers’ purchase journeys. Enterprises are looking at innovative models that eliminate the middlemen and leverage digital platforms to reach the end customer. Retailers are adopting direct-to-consumer models that displace the need for physical stores. Value chain compression offers several economic benefits, such as reducing capital and infrastructure costs. For example, blockchain can reduce several steps around validation, tracking, clearing, and risk mitigation. This allows the companies (financial institutions) using blockchain to reduce infrastructure costs by 30%.

In the webinar Frost & Sullivan experts Malabika Mandal and Vinay Venkatesan discussed the predicted key trends arising in the near future that will create avenues within emerging value chains and digital identity management.  Those subjects included investment potential and growth opportunities in digital identity management; the role of digital identity management in realising economic potential, improving national security, and fostering social inclusivity in the next decade; exploring how traditional value chain models will evolve in the near future and what parts of the value chain will get compressed; and, the emerging business models supporting the value chain evolution and understanding how these new proficiencies in the value chain will impact the customer’s journey.