HSP Latin America 2023 – Celebrating 10th Anniversary in Style

Nassau, the Bahamas was the spectacular setting for the 10th High Security Printing™ (HSP) Latin America conference, which welcomed over 240 delegates from 118 organisations and 38 countries, over half from Latin America and the Caribbean.

As seen in many previous years, Latin America is an attractive and evolving market with many developments in both currency and identity documents along the coastlines of the Caribbean and Pacific.

The conference opened with two seminars, one of which was run by identity verification solutions provider Onfido focusing on document fraud in an online environment and the challenges organisations deal with when trying to authenticate documents remotely.

The second seminar, titled ‘Fighting Counterfeiting and Adulteration of Documents and Banknotes’, was run by Regula Forensics and provided an introduction to forensic sciences and the classification of research items related to documents and currency, along with a study of the specialty of criminalistics in this field.

The main programme was opened by Derek Rolle, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of the Bahamas (CBB), welcoming delegates and providing an introduction to the country and its environment, and the role of the central bank in its economy.

Presentations followed from the CBB on highlights of its currency programme and changes across the most recent family of banknotes, and from Landqart (the substrate supplier for the higher denominations and platinum sponsor for the event) on durability and creativity when developing a new note series. The Brazilian Ministry of Interior closed the session with a presentation on the new Brazilian ID documents.

The programme then split into separate currency and ID tracks, with the currency sessions covering Regional Currency Developments, Production and Print, Substrates and Features and Sustainability and the Environment.

In the ID track, the first session was on recent developments in passports. It included presentations from Argentina’s National Directorate for Migration on challenges in document issuance, Brazil’s Society of Forensic Sciences on counterfeit and falsified Brazilian passports, Casa da Moeda do Brasil on the design and development of the new Brazilian passport and Veridos on the recently introduced Costa Rican ePassport, which will be covered in more detail in next month’s edition.

The following session focused on design and security for travel and identity documents with presentations from HID Global on the design of Estonian and Bahraini ePassports, Argentina’s National Registry on the use of AI in the authentication of both physical and digital documents, and Thales on the next generation ‘Phygital’ experience in identity.

Substrates and features were the focus of the next ID session on the second morning. The UK’s Luminescence Sun Chemical opened the session with a paper on securing documents using security inks, which was followed by a paper from the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Safety on virtual asylum ID document pilot. The Austrian State Printing House (OeSD) explored the use of biometric barcodes to secure documents and El Salvador National Registry of Natural Persons spoke on the latest developments in the country’s national identity scheme.

The final ID session saw four presentations on document fraud and anti-counterfeiting. This included a paper from IDEMIA on how colour portraits in polycarbonate documents help prevent forgery; HSI Forensic Laboratory of the US Department of Homeland Security on document fraud trends along the southwest border in El Paso, Texas; a presentation from Mexico’s Department for Protection of Documents and Forensic Sciences on the latest trends in document counterfeiting in Mexico; and a paper from Chile’s Criminalistic Laboratory on methods fraudsters use to alter government-issued documents in Chile.

The final session of the conference focused on technology and innovation, with fascinating presentations from the Bank of Spain titled ‘Neurocash – a New Way of Designing Cash’, and from Landqart on bringing physical documents into the digital realm by printing a secure code inside the substrate (Durasafe Certify) and linking this with the code on the finished document so that the document, object and owner can be authenticated visually and digitally.

A specialised exhibition of over 40 companies was held alongside the conference sessions, providing delegates with an opportunity to see the latest industry products and solutions.

Other highlights of the event included the conference dinner in the beautiful gardens of the Grand Hayat Baha Mar and the presentation of the prestigious Regional Banknote and Regional ID Document of the Year awards.

For the ID awards, there were winners in all three categories – Best New Passport, Best New National ID Card, and Best New Other Security Document. This year, El Salvador and Bahamas both received recognition, with Brazil and Costa Rica jointly receiving the award for Best New Passport. 

Concluding the awards ceremony, a special Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Harald Klint, of Colombian security agency Imaprok, who is among the best-known figures in the industry, particularly in the region.

Reconnaissance is now shifting its focus to the HSP Asia event, which takes place in Colombo, Sri Lanka from 4-6 December. HSP Latin America 2024 will be going to Santiago, Chile in June.