WHY – IN BANKING AND BEYOND – Technologies have TO BE RIGHT FIRST TIME
By Karen Quinn, Head of Marketing at biometric security specialists AimBrain
Technology has embedded itself within our lives: it's trained to recognise us, second-guess us and make our lives easier. In areas for example biometrics, adoption has been rapid and enthusiastic.
Banks have been early adopters of biometric technology: selfie-enabled mobile banking, document scanning, along with other means of user authentication happen to be actively explored and deployed by many financial institutions. The introduction of the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) has also increased this technology adoption.
PSD2 and biometrics
PSD2's Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) is putting technology at the centre of open banking, requiring certain transactions to authenticate using two factors from three; the well-discussed knowledge, possession, and inherence. Biometrics are selling the inherence factor and becoming a well-recognized and trusted step.
But for the enthusiasm around biometrics, the implementation hasn't always been smooth. The trouble with our appetite for technologies are that anything less than perfect doesn't pass muster. When one bank rolled out its customer acquisition programme that onboarded users with document scanning, there were some issues with certain smartphone models – which ultimately required those who own these devices to take photos of their documents with a webcam before uploading these to the online service.
This was a frustrating process for customers, and some went directly to a competitor after a few failed attempts to provide their documents. First impressions matter: technology has progressed to a point where customers have an extremely low tolerance for imperfection – causing banks that fall short to miss out on relationships that might otherwise last decades.
Banking from the future
Newer organisations aren't bogged down with legacy systems, processes and mindsets spanning several decades. Challenger banks are putting customer experience in the very heart of what they are doing and designing their services around what the consumer wants today as well as in the future. This has included simplifying authentication by ditching passwords for facial or voice authentication – although, so far, this has focused almost exclusively on the mobile channel. It's now simpler to access banking services through biometrics linked to your smartphone, but the average consumer presently has 3.2 devices. What goes on when they're using their tablet or work laptop or in your own home? Does fixing one channel represent progress should there be no continuity or synchronicity across all channels?
Customers demand the same experience and excellence in every way they interact with a company. Security is more important than it's ever been, and the rise of biometrics in mobile banking has been swift and impressive. But unless it's a part of a cohesive strategy to synchronise the experience across all channels, it's simply another different, disjointed way to reach the same organisation. The client has to remember passwords, PINs, special phrases and more to access internet banking – and provide telephone banking codes, bill information, and other evidence of identity to reach their bank by phone.
It's similar to selling a car having a different key for every door: frustrating, inconvenient, and needlessly complex whenever a master key to open every door could be far more effective. Institutions must be the same brand and adopt the same technologically-savvy, customer-first approach across every channel.
This isn't always easy. One MIT Sloan report found that “companies with multiple channels to the customer are experiencing pressure to provide an integrated experience” – and that “multichannel services require envisioning and implementing change across customer experience and internal operational processes.”
But times have evolved, and technology are now able to provide easy ways to deliver an integrated, consistent customer experience. Using a BIDaaS (Biometric Identity as-a-Service) provider, a bank can use an Application Programming Interface (API) to improve security and experience in a consistent way across any channel. AimBrain's facial authentication technology lets a person enrol on one channel – such as a laptop or smartphone – and then log in using any other channel with a camera. Its voice authentication module lets a person enrol using one device, then authenticate across any channel that includes a microphone. The combined AimFace//LipSync module may be used across any device with both a camera along with a microphone to enable a simple, Snapchat-like authentication. AimBrain's behavioural authentication component also continually analyses in-session gestures and movements – whether via mouse, keyboard, touchpad, screen or phone. As all information is captured (within the bank's infrastructure), encrypted and converted to a pseudonymised form in the cloud – from any personal or financial information – the biometric template serves as a digital identity upon which a user can be authenticated across any channel.
This means forget about PINs for the ATM, telephone codes for that call centre, one-time passcodes, call-backs, errant SMS codes, online passwords, or physical ID in a branch. The customer's voice, face and behaviour will be all that's required however they interact with their bank, which makes for a simple, smart solution to customer authentication that offers a universal key for all doors – and something that can't be lost or copied.
Banks which focus their efforts on providing this type of key will be rewarded; those that continue to patch-fix, upgrading one door at any given time, may find that their customers have traded them set for a faster, safer, more modern alternative.