Growing up in Brussels, Belgium, Pierre Demarche competed in sports at a high level, dreaming of one day becoming a professional athlete. However, when a physical injury meant he had to change career paths, he applied his competitive nature and determination to succeed in the world of business, always willing to beat records/targets, change the way companies have been operating to continuously look for higher performance and challenges/targets. He set a new goal, to reach an executive position at a leading global company to impact change and lead those ambitions he set out at a young age.
Now, as Vice President of Product and Marketing at TeleSign, he does just that. The drive and competitive nature that is innately part of him allows him to undertake big challenges in his role, from managing the $230 million acquisition of Telesign by BICS, to implementing new and innovative products and services for the company. This includes the launch of new innovative fraud detection products at TeleSign, under Demarche’s role.
“TeleSign is a leader in the authentication and mobile identity space. Over the years TeleSign built expertise to provide solutions to enterprises and among them the largest digital companies of the world. They have unique solutions built on complex data science models and machine learning which use the latest technologies. They operate in the most exciting business environment, providing solutions to internet properties enabling them to build their own solutions. With the boom of the technology business and digitalization, being at the centre of innovation and creating value from this ecosystem is to me the most attractive job. In addition, product is at the core of technology and the strategy of any tech company. Leading the product management and marketing of TeleSign, a company that is successful in this environment, growing its business and financials with strong investments into innovation is one of the most exciting jobs,” said Demarche.
In the current digital economy, more and more platforms and businesses engage and interact with their end users through their phone number as their identifier, allowing different types of transactions and activities on their online platforms. Mobile Identity is at the heart of the digital economy. It plays a central role in communication and interaction with people and things through the entire life cycle of a user on a platform, from registration, login, transactions, management of online accounts and interactions between the brand and the end users. It is providing solutions to secure those actions like registration fraud prevention, credit scoring, transaction risk score, and identity verification.
TeleSign has long been at the forefront in driving mobile identity as an asset for their customers that count amongst 20 out of the 25 largest internet properties globally. By leveraging phone number intelligence data, TeleSign can provide actionable insights that answer key questions about a platform’s users. They deliver solutions that strengthens the verification process, reduce fake accounts, inform risk models and improves conversion, allowing large global customers to secure and grow their end user base in a digital space that see more and more online breaches and security threats. Furthermore, TeleSign has created a proprietary reputation scoring API that uses machine learning algorithms and data science to block harmful bad actors from ever onboarding to an ecosystem. The result is a reduction of spam, phishing attacks and other costly forms of fraud.
TeleSign owns multiple patents in that space and being at the forefront of this market for years, it has been building strong relationships with the largest internet properties of the world allowing them to develop new business with their end users in a secure way. Capitalizing on the assets already built and synergies with BICS acquired through the acquisition, TeleSign is now investing massively into expanding and further improving some solutions.
“TeleSign is moving towards a more holistic approach to mobile identity. Knowledge is power and the more intelligence we can use to tell our customers about their users not only makes those users more valuable through the concept of Know Your Customer (KYC) but it also leads to an all-around safer platform. What TeleSign is prioritizing is getting all of our solutions available throughout the world. We have a good start, we are the only company being able to provide identity solutions globally, including for emerging markets, but the further our global footprint expands, the more value we can provide to our international enterprise customers,” said Demarche.
Combining his Telco background with software and fraud/security experience, Demarche has been steering the organization to accelerate and further develop new mobile identity products, increasing investments and capitalizing on synergies that he designed during the acquisition process. In doing this, he built a team of specials and experts, recognized as among the best in the space like Ravish Patel, who joined the team more than a year ago. This tremendously helped with accelerating development of new products and defining a unique vision in the space.
“Pierre is a great leader, combining unique expertise he acquired in the telco and software space with his vision of the mobile identity market," said Ravish Patel, Director of Product Management at TeleSign.
When taking in the news, it is evident to those who are not at all tech savvy that mobile identity is possibly the most powerful thing happening in the industry right now, yet many companies don’t think about it until it is too late. Security is more important than ever before, and Demarche and Telesign are working hard to pioneer technology that puts their customers at ease.