Citigroup bringing voice recognition to Asia
Citigroup is preparing to be the first major bank in Asia to offer voice-recognition technology to its retail customers, part of a move to upgrade its internet and mobile banking services across the region.
The US bank plans to have at least 1 million Asian users of the technology within the next 12 months, doing away with cumbersome passwords and speeding up transactions such as money transfers, bill payments and checks on account balances, according to Anand Selvakesari, the Singapore-based head of consumer banking for Asia Pacific.
“One of the frustrating points for the client is remembering the password and being asked questions multiple times over,” said Selvakesari, 49.
The growth of internet and mobile banking means that about 95% of Citigroup’s retail banking transactions in the region now took place outside the branch network, Selvakesari said.
Citigroup reduced the number of branches in Asia by 9% to 481 in the first quarter from a year earlier, according to a statement in April. At the same time, it added about 1 million new digital banking clients, said James Griffiths, the bank’s Hong Kong-based spokesman. Asia accounts for 21% of the group’s global consumer banking business by revenue.
Selvakesari said Citigroup would introduce voice recognition in Singapore first, followed by Australia, Hong Kong, India and Taiwan over the next few months. Those markets have the highest proportion of digital banking usage in the region, ranging from 40% to 60%, added Griffiths.
The new technology will allow Citigroup’s Asian customer service division, which receives about 35 million calls every year, to cut the average time it takes to validate a client’s identity over the phone to 15 seconds, from 45 seconds previously, Selvakesari said.
“It’s a very interesting phase of evolution,” he said. “We’re looking forward to this phase of the next two to three years of the whole digital transformation that is happening.”
Last year, Citigroup introduced voice recognition to its credit card customers in the US, the bank’s first use of the technology. About 70% of those customers have enrolled, Selvakesari said.
HSBC and Standard Chartered are among other banks looking into voice-recognition services in Asia.
Karen Fawcett, chief executive for retail banking with Standard Chartered, said voice recognition was a “very interesting area that we are exploring” in Asia. HSBC is planning to introduce the service in Hong Kong in the second half of this year, after a launch in the UK in the summer.
“Our customers are looking for simple yet secure ways to bank,” said Kevin Martin, HSBC’s head of retail banking and wealth management for Asia Pacific. “In the future, we expect biometrics to become the norm for personal identification in many of our day to day activities, including banking.”
The total revenue of finance biometrics hardware and software will jump to US$2.2 billion in 2024 from $126 million in 2015, with Asia Pacific being the biggest contributor, according to a forecast by Tractica LLC. Mobile banking will remain a key area to fuel the market growth, the research firm said in a report last August.