Voice-based biometric for online banking eyed

SINGAPORE – Aboitiz-led Union Bank of the Philippines plans to introduce voice recognition as another biometric verification as it builds on scalable technology for safer and more efficient online banking services.

On the sidelines of the Singapore Fintech Festival here, Union Bank’s head of artificial intelligence (AI) and innovation center of excellence Adrienne Heinrich said the financial institution is preparing its voice recognition technology.

This will serve as another biometric for digital identity authentication for better customer service experience and, most importantly, help prevent fraud and scams in online banking.

“Now, we are proposing that your voice becomes your password to identify your data so that you don’t have to use OTP (one-time password) in the future,” Heinrich said.

Currently, the types of biometrics being used in banking include facial recognition, fingerprints, and iris scans. Union Bank is expected to be the first to implement speech recognition once it materializes.

Heinrich maintained that scammers still excel at social engineering in order to manipulate victims to give out confidential information, even with numerous security questions in place.

She noted that this is prevalent in younger digital nations like the Philippines where awareness is still lacking. Thus, leveraging inherent characteristics unique to an individual, such as voice biometrics, can significantly enhance security.

To jumpstart the planned technology, Heinrich said Union Bank would first implement this via customer service calls before it would be used to take over one’s account.

Heinrich argued that developing AI needs to be done in a step by step manner to ensure that customers would not be impacted that much.

“We hope to implement it next year, and I hope it [the shift] will be super fast. It really depends on many factors, but the mindset is there that we want to build scalable technology,” Heinrich said.

“Voice solutions are a low hanging fruit, which are secure while at the same time seamless in the customer experience, with no necessary change to customer’s usual activities,” she said.

The voice biometric idea started at the end of 2022 and Union Bank has already finished the proof of concept for the technology where it included various factors and conditions that could impact the quality of the voice.

This covers change in voice due to cough or colds, different dialects and accents, as well as the kind of environment a person is in during the call.

“We have to make sure the data is representative of the real world scenarios. We also tried to get as many voice samples as possible from people,” Heinrich said.

“So, when they call, instead of asking for so much data, they will just speak about their concern and then this is running in the background and automatically authenticate them,” Heinrich said.

The voice biometric will come with a matching score, which means that it will be a much easier process for the customer if it is high.

As to the gray area, a customer can still fall back to the OTP security request once the voice recognition fails to work on a certain occurrence.