Powering Customer Driven Security with Voice Biometrics

Posted by Deborah Peace on May 7, 2019 9:30:00 AM

 

customer driven security

The likelihood of fraud is rising in correlation with the consistent advancement of technology. In fact, according to Javelin’s 2018 Identity Fraud Report, there was a 6.64 percent increase in identity fraud in 2017. But for today’s tech-savvy consumers, these advancements open new opportunities and features that benefit them. It also, however, brings worry for businesses.

As technology evolves and new concepts come into play, such as AI, businesses can actually utilize these new tools to their advantage. Even as fraudsters push forward, financial institutions can protect themselves by enhancing the capabilities of their digital banking offerings with actionable fraud prevention tools, including voice biometrics. 

Implementing a “Frictionless,” Customer-Driven Security Program

Before they can access their accounts, customers often need to provide passcodes, personal identifiers and answers to several rounds of security questions. And to speak to a customer support agent they endure a similar process. Yet, within today’s marketplace, consumers increasingly demand frictionless authentication across all of the channels in which they engage.

“Frictionless” is the key. The more needed security added, there is an adverse effect on the customer’s experience with the transaction and with the organization. This can lead to decreased loyalty and levels of adoption. The user experience becomes a challenging one for financial services clients when asked to add a token to a password to a fingerprint to a voice authentication measure.

Striking a balance in a “customer-is-king” marketplace is the key to both appropriate security measures and customer experience. Voice biometrics has emerged as a means to providing frictionless authentication, and has gained attention for its potential to streamline the customer experience while preventing fraud. Enabled by the prevalence of web self-service and mobile applications, voice biometrics is widely used today to verify customers’ identities via digital channels.

Fighting Fraud with Voice Biometrics

As fraud techniques continue to progress at a steady rate alongside the advancements that make our lives easier, financial institutions must invest in intelligent solutions to combat fraud and out-smart the fraudster every time. Here’s how voice biometrics can be that solution:

  1. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Authentication

IVR enlists an automated voice enrollment or verification process that uses non-personal information to quickly and safely authenticate a person before handing them off to an agent in a pre- or partially-authenticated manner. With IVR, the caller’s voice is the passcode instead of punching in a number, so they are instantly authenticated and can move on with the transaction.

  1. Call Center Oriented: Agent + Caller

In this scenario, the agent records the caller’s voiceprint to reduce the consumer’s involvement in the future. This only takes a minute or so, and it reduces friction while enhancing fraud detection capabilities.

  1. Create a Voiceprint for the Fraudster

As previously mentioned, organizations can make voiceprints of their customers. Therefore, they can also make voiceprints of fraudsters. If a fraudster gets through and performs a fraudulent transaction, then the voiceprint used is flagged to be rejected for future use.

Our world is continuing to move down a digital-first path, with voice becoming the only key for consumers to unlock transactions and financial decisioning. Voice will soon be the norm for all industries to authenticate customers. The solution to the issue of passwords and pin numbers being regularly compromised, is trusting the uniqueness of the human voice to serve as the most elite security measure.

For more information, download ACH Alert’s whitepaper, “Combating Fraud: The Role of Voice Biometrics in Your Layered Security Program,” here.

Download White Paper  Combatting Fraud: The Role of Voice Biometrics  in Your Layered Security Program

Topics: Biometric Authentication