Citi adopts voice biometrics system
Citi Philippines launched the groundbreaking voice biometrics authentication technology that is expected to benefit one million clients in the country.
Aftad Ahmed, CEO of Citi Philippines, said remembering passwords, personal identification numbers and responding to a series of questions to verify their identities as they call into the bank would soon be a thing of the past.
“We are proud of our strong track record in innovation, and we are delighted to once again take the lead in introducing a game changer in the banking industry. We are relentlessly focused on making it more convenient for our customers to bank with us. Voice Biometrics will deliver convenience and additional protection for their accounts,” Ahmed said.
Citi’s clients in the country could now enroll in Voice Biometrics and let their voices be the means for authentication of their phone banking transactions. The voice biometrics authentication capability identifies customers through their voice print, which, similar to a fingerprint, is unique to each person.
Citi clients could opt to enroll by recording their voices, which the bank would use to generate and store their voice prints for matching subsequent calls to Citibank. Each voice print would be uniquely tagged and cannot be reverse engineered once stored.
Once available, customers who call into the bank’s contact centers would have their identity automatically verified within 15 seconds or less as they explain their reason for calling. 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 underscores Citi’s focus on technology to better serve our customers. With this new capability, we offer our customers a faster and more secure authentication for a better customer experience,” Citi Asia Pacific Head for Consumer Banking Anand Selva said.
To date, voice biometrics authentication has been implemented in Taiwan, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia and is expected to be rolled out throughout the region in 2016 and 2017 to cover all 12 of Citi’s consumer banking markets in Asia Pacific that represent more than half of the bank’s 19 consumer markets globally.
Citi targets to be the first financial services firm to deploy voice biometrics authentication across Asia Pacific as the bank builds further on its successful innovation in retail banking in the region.
It has around 15 million customers in the region and the bank expects to have at least one million clients actively using voice biometrics authentication in the next 12 months. Within three years the bank expects the number of users to grow to three million.