2015 Identity Protection Services: Business-to-Business Market

The business-to-business (B2B), or affiliate, market for identity protection services (IDPS) consists of all IDPS subscriptions offered to consumers through intermediaries rather than sold directly from the company offering the service. Most prominently, this includes event-based subscriptions, such as when consumers are offered a free or subsidized subscription following identity fraud or a data breach. However, it also encompasses a wide array of secondary sellers such as financial institutions (FIs), card issuers, employers, insurance companies, and even telecoms. These businesses may offer the services as a standalone product or bundle it with the services they already offer.

This partnership offers a powerful mechanism for both the originator of the service and the institution reselling it to extend their reach. The reseller is able to offer a service outside its normal scope as an added value for its clients. Typically, the IDPS service is rebranded from the originator to the reseller. In return, the originator is immediately granted access to up to tens of millions of potential customers, with little marketing effort on its part. The originator can gain revenue from not only fees paid by the reseller, but from the end customers who extend their subscriptions into a full-service direct-to-consumer subscription.

Primary Questions:

• How are data-breach-related offerings affecting the identity protection market?
• How does the B2B market differ from the business-to-consumer (B2C) IDPS market?
• What influences attrition rates among IDPS subscribers?
• How can IDPS providers encourage subscribers to transition from free to paid subscriptions?
• How are regulatory actions affecting IDPS providers?

Companies Mentioned:

Consumer data in this report is based on information gathered from several Javelin surveys administered in 2014. Data was gathered and weighted to reflect a representative sample of the general U.S. population.

• A random-sample panel of 3,100 respondents in an August/September 2014 online survey. 
• A random-sample panel of 5,000 respondents in a November/December 2014 online survey. 
• 13 IDPS vendors serving the partner/resale market were surveyed.