The move came in reaction to a study released by the Tower Group showing that fewer than one-third of financial institutions now say they will meet the impending deadline.

"To say that financial institutions are dealing with a lot these days is a major understatement," said ID insight president Adam Elliott. "As it's becoming more and more apparent that the majority of organizations are not going to meet the deadline, we took this step to allow them to test our Safe2Change solution and become compliant with as little pain as possible."

According to Elliott, ID Insight will offer financial institutions its Safe2Change FACT Act compliance solution free of charge or obligation for 60 days if they sign up prior to the Nov. 1 compliance deadline. The service, which assesses the risk of address changes and discrepancies, can be up and running within 24 hours, allowing financial institutions to comply with regulations 114(B) and 315 and help ensure that consumers are better protected against account takeover and new-account fraud on the date the federal government intended.

The new prescriptive Red Flag guidelines require institutions to begin scrutinizing address changes on existing customers, as well as new account applications where the application address differs from the information maintained by the credit bureaus. Given the deadline, banks are reporting that they either won't be compliant, or they are turning toward internal manual processes to meet the need. This includes tactics such as mailing letters, or asking for documentary evidence of address changes. They understand that this may not be optimal, but solves a short term need.

Safe2Change from ID Insight is the industry's leading FACT Act-compliant solution to identify the risk associated with address changes and address discrepancies. In deploying Safe2Change, institutions are able to become compliant at a fraction of the cost of deploying manual processes. In addition, it allows customers to provide a clear audit trail to ensure that the institution has met its obligations.

The 60-day trial program allows for banks and credit unions to turn on Safe2Change the same day. They can then immediately begin analyzing the risk of address changes and discrepancies through ID Insight's web portal. "The program allows our customers to utilize the system at no charge for the first 60 days," says Elliott. "We wanted to provide a no-risk opportunity to meet compliance. We expect that most will continue the service after the trial period as hundreds of other ID Insight customers have done."