Citi recently announced their latest service for their banking clients - the Voice Biometrics. It is the first ever in the Philippines for a bank to enable their banking clients to grant access for transaction via phone with the use of their voice print, via the Voice Biometrics technology provided by Citi.
I know this may raise some eye brows to some people, but for long time bankers, they are waiting for this to arrive in the country. Citi shared to us that the technology is now being used in the US and also in other Asian regions, and this is the most secured form of using your voice print as your password to access your account any time and any where via phone call to a Citi customer service. The Voice Biometrics are tested for 2 years and it was proven that it is the most secured password ever.
Bank clients will need to apply first for the service and apply their voice print for the Voice Biometrics.
Live voice are recognized only by the voice biometric tech and this will be verified if the voice print matches to a series of the right voice print wave through conversation with the Citi phone customer service hotline.
Citi told us that even recorded voices or voice impersonation can be detected by the machine, but it will be detected as fake and it will not grant access to any bank accounts. It will be automatically rejected once it didn't matches with the voice print that are recorded by Citi's Voice Biometrics.
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 enroll 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 will be uniquely tagged and cannot be reverse engineered once stored.
Once available, customers who call into the bank’s contact centres will 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% less time spent verifying their details currently.
Citi shared to us that they now have around 10,000 applicants of Voice Biometrics, and this will continue to grow and will target 1,000,000 in the next 12 months here in the Philippines. With a total of 15,000,000 clients, they expect to grow 3M more clients here in our region after the popularity of the Voice Biometrics tech of Citi.
“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.”
- Citi Philippines CEO Aftad Ahmed
“Voice biometrics is a great example of how we at Citi listen to our clients and leverage technology to address their concerns, With our client’s agreement, we can digitize their voice print and with a successful registration, the next time they call, we will do away with the three to five questions to verify their identity, which can take between 45 and 60 seconds.”
- Citi Consumer Banking Head Bea Tan
