Business today doesn’t end at the corporate firewall. Financial institutions, insurers, manufacturers, and service providers now operate in a mesh of partnerships, agents, dealers, brokers, outsourcers, and data processors, all requiring varying degrees of access to applications, APIs, and sensitive datasets. Yet, many organizations still treat these “non-employee” users as an afterthought in identity programs, governed by spreadsheets, manual approvals, or disjointed provisioning tools.
The latest Thales-commissioned research from Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) reveals the reality: third-party identities are growing 37% annually, outpacing employee identities by a wide margin
Nearly nine out of ten BFSI organizations report that partners and contractors now access an expanding number of internal apps and data sources
This growth is creating both opportunity and risk, opportunity in agility and new market channels, and risk in compliance exposure, fraud, and credential misuse.
The modern ecosystem demands structured delegation, not blind distribution of access. Agents selling insurance policies, dealers servicing loans, or fintech partners processing transactions all need delegated rights that mirror their business function while preserving strict accountability.
This should be the precise design focus of any modern B2B CIAM platform, which reframes third-party IAM from a security burden to a business enabler. It allows organizations to:
Thales, who has a purpose built B2B solution calls it “decisive technology for decisive moments,” and today, the moment is now.
The ESG data is sobering. Fifty-eight percent of executives consider third-party access a high or critical risk, yet 30–40% of operational teams still underestimate the severity. This perception gap means decisions about vendor, dealer, and contractor access are often delayed or underfunded.
Moreover, 89% of BFSI organizations have already prioritized modernization of third-party identity solutions. The motivations go beyond compliance: agility, collaboration, and growth outpace security as the top strategic drivers. The implication is clear, leaders now view identity as a lever for business enablement, not a cost center.
Failure to modernize, however, leads to predictable pain: manual onboarding, inconsistent access controls, duplicate credentials across systems, and prolonged off-boarding. In regulated sectors, that translates directly to audit findings and financial penalties.
To govern this growing ecosystem effectively, organizations should follow a pragmatic, staged approach:
These are not theoretical steps, they are precisely the capabilities that a B2B solution should through its delegated administration, MFA, SSO, and identity lifecycle management modules.
The ESG findings reinforce what Thales already anticipated: enterprises are shifting from a multi-vendor sprawl toward consolidation. Nearly nine in ten organizations are eager to rationalize their identity stacks to improve efficiency and security. Thales OneWelcome’s modular, cloud-native design enables this consolidation without sacrificing flexibility, connecting CIAM, B2B, and workforce IAM into a single governance framework.
As identity perimeters blur, the Thales model unites three critical needs:
In the coming decade, identity will define digital trust far more than perimeter firewalls or VPNs ever did. The organizations that thrive will be those that master delegated trust, empowering agents, partners, and third parties to operate independently yet securely within their ecosystem.
The research confirms what intuition and experience already suggest: third-party identity is not a fringe concern, it is the next frontier of enterprise risk and opportunity.
Thales, through its OneWelcome platform, offers the blueprint for this evolution: not merely controlling access, but governing digital relationships in a world where collaboration is the perimeter.
Thales Peer Insights Report:
IAM Trends: Identity and Access in Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance