Banks and Credit Unions are Under Attack

Customers trust banks and financial institutions with sensitive information and expect robust protection. However, fraudsters are increasingly taking over accounts, stealing identities, or committing transaction fraud through contact centers, leading to significant fraud loss and long-term brand damages. A data breach is devastating to a financial institution, and recent breaches have been tied to a lack of contact center security.

In addition to security attacks, the pandemic has increased customer expectations while changing the method they prefer to interact with your bank. Branch traffic has dramatically decreased and in some cases completely shut down. Mobile and online banking interactions are on the rise. Video enabled Interactive Teller Machines (ITM) traffic is seeing increased traffic. Finally, telephone traffic into customer service has increased while customer service representative’s attrition rate is rising (even with higher unemployment) and most customer service representative are adjusting to work from home challenges.

Despite the overwhelming issues affecting the bank’s brand, security, attrition rates, additional call traffic and overall customer and member experience, there are several technology solutions that can help provide positive impact to the business. Voice Biometric technology is proving to improve security, address attrition issues, improve the customer experience and overall provide significant brand protection.

Voice biometrics is a technology that relies on the recognition of voice patterns to verify the identity of individuals. This is possible because each person’s vocal tract is unique much like a person’s fingerprint, iris or face. Physical features, both phonetic and morphological are particular to each individual making them virtually fraud-proof.

There are over one hundred voice characteristics that can be measured to determine who you are based on your voice. To identify a person using voice biometrics, a person’s voice needs to be captured. This makes voice biometrics fundamentally different from knowledge-based credentials, such as PINs and security questions. Someone cannot guess your voice, whereas someone can guess your PIN or answers to security questions. For the most part, a person’s voice is not readily available on the internet, unlike the answers to security questions, such as a person’s mother’s maiden name. Although a recording of someone’s voice can be captured by a malicious user, the voice is inherently static. Voice biometric systems can be dynamic, meaning they can be used to assess a person’s identity during live conversations or by asking a caller to speak a random phrase. As a result, voice biometric technologies enable a higher level of security than other identification systems, such as PIN-based systems. In today’s crowded banking marketplace, the most convenient experiences will have a competitive edge. Biometrics-based authentication not only significantly improves security but also provides a non-intrusive authentication taking customer convenience to the next level.

Voice biometrics has proven to be a cost-effective solution that can help financial institutions:

• Reduce account fraud and provide additional brand protection.
• Reduce up to 90 seconds per call based upon recent studies.
• Improve the customer experience and minimizes authentication frustration.
• Reduce operating costs, contact centers will be able to handle additional calls without hiring more employees.
• Improve the employee experience by reducing repetitive tasks and increasing quality time spent with customers.
• Reduce attrition and save on onboarding costs.

In order to realize all the benefits, most banks will need help validating the business value of the investment. Validating the business value, will help prioritize project funding and executive approval. If you need “input” formulating the business case, we have the experience and tools to help you with the financial analysis, vendor evaluations, implementation strategy and ongoing management.