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Banco Santander Mexico Picks Nuance Voice Biometrics Solution for Customer Authentication

By Shamila Janakiraman, TMCnet Contributor

When customers call banks, they are required to pass through a cumbersome authentication process which involves remembering PINs, passwords, and security questions. Several banks are striving to streamline this process to make it simpler by implementing a more natural authentication process.

Voice biometrics can be used to make the customer’s first point of contact more engaging and effortless. Banks can now enhance their customer experience and also improve security by using the customer’s voice as a passphrase.

Banco Santander México has selected Nuance (News - Alert) Communications’ Vocal Password voice biometrics solution to replace PINs, passwords, and security questions in its automated phone system. The Nuance voice biometrics solution has been deployed to securely and automatically confirm the identity of Santander customers.

Santander is one of the top five banks in México that is using Nuance’s VocalPassword solution. When customers call the bank they are automatically authenticated by the bank’s phone system using their voice. This makes banking-by-phone easy and secure.

Now customers are required to say, “At Banco Santander, my voice is my password” to be authenticated by their unique voiceprint. The Santander’s interactive voice response (IVR) phone system will authenticate the caller, who can proceed to access his/her account.

Banco Santander México has gained over 1.7 million customers after the implementation of the Nuance VocalPassword which serves as a customer-facing voice biometrics application. Santander’s customers find the new voice biometrics authentication process easy to use and more secure than PIN-based authentication, said officials.

The Nuance voice biometrics technology has been deployed widely by large organizations to make account access easier for their customers, automate fraud detection for their contact centers and also to automate password reset processes for employees.

An Opus Research report reveals that the spending on voice biometric solutions for authentication grew by 74.2 percent from 2011 to 2012 which is expected to grow at a rate of 35 percent (CAGR) over the next five years.