Biometrics: Ready for Prime Time?

Banking Strategies - Off-site Biometrics Authenticate Callers, the Unbanked

Branches and online banking usually come to mind first for financial services companies considering the use of biometrics for authentication. But there are two other “offsite” possibilities: call centers and banking kiosks.

In call centers, the focus is on voice verification systems. New Hope, Pa.-based VoiceVerified has developed voice verification technology for call centers in a variety of industries and this spring began promoting a system for bank call centers.

Customers contacting the bank’s call center would be asked by an automated system to repeat several random integers. When the customer’s Identity has been verified, the caller istransferred to a bank representative. “Studies show that customer service representatives typically spend at least 15 seconds identifying each caller,” says Wayne Cluff, president and COO of VoiceVerified. “We think our system is a more efficient way to identify customers and they don’t have to reveal confidential Information, such as their Social Security number or their mother’s maiden name.”

One of the applications that Cluff thinks will be most popular with banks relates to when customers call a toll-free number to activate their credit or debit card. This could enable the bank that issued the card to be certain that the person calling is the person for whom the card was issued. Currently, two unidentified banks are testing the use of voice recognition for credit card-related applications, Cluff says.

The cost of the voice recognition system is typically based on a per-application basis. For example, a bank using this system at a call center for its credit card application would pay about $1 per cardholder plus 1O cents for each verification, according to Michael F. Antonucci, VoiceVerified’s vice president of marketing… | Laurie Giesen

The full story can be found by viewing the Thursday, June 1, 2006 issue of Banking Strategies entitled, ”BIOMETRICS: READY FOR PRIME TIME?”.