For over one million of Citi’s Consumer Banking customers in Asia Pacific remembering multiple PINs and responding to a series of questions to verify their identities is now redundant.
After launching in May 2016 the bank hit the million milestone mark in the last few weeks, some two months ahead of schedule. Citi was the first financial services firm to deploy voice biometrics authentication across Asia Pacific.
Voice biometrics authentication has already been implemented in Taiwan, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and India, the bank said in a media statement.
Clients who call into the bank’s contact centres have their identity automatically verified within 15 seconds or less as they explain their reason for calling.
Good or Bad - Voice Prints Stored
This is a reduction from an average time of around 45 seconds currently or 66 percent less time spent verifying their details currently.
The voice biometrics authentication capability identifies customers through their voice print, which, similar to a fingerprint, is unique to each person.
Citi clients can opt to enrol by recording their voices, which the bank will use to generate and store their voice prints for matching subsequent calls to Citibank. Each voice print is uniquely tagged and cannot be reverse engineered once stored.
Growing Biometric Applications
«We are making banking easier for our clients by leveraging digitization and innovation which helps deliver a remarkable client experience,» said Anand Selva, Head of Asia Pacific Consumer Banking for Citi.
More practical use of biometrics was discussed with John Hogue, the head of Citi innovation labs in Singapore and New York, which proof ideas to improve the U.S. bank’s services with customers, in an interview with finews.asia last year.
