Biometrics in Banking

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By Lockerz

There is an increase in the use of biometrics in banking for client-facing applications. Turkey, Brunei, Nigeria and Poland are just some of the countries that have already announced biometric ATMs, for example. The use of biometrics at the till for payment is also on the rise. Some cite the fact that there has not been a massive up-take in the use of biometrics in consumer facing applications as evidence that the technology does not yet function to an adequate level of performance. Every large biometric deployment I have been involved in has entailed rigorous and exhaustive testing to clearly demonstrate accuracy performance against clearly and aggressively pre-defined test parameters, in real-world environments, using customer data; I don’t expect financial customers would be any less arduous. I do agree that lab testing / data is insufficient, and solution providers who are unwilling or unable to demonstrate predictable and repeatable accuracy SLAs in real-world environments should be treated with caution. Is a biometric system fallible? Yes. The question is, is it less fallible then existing precautions already in place, and does the deployment of such a system, in simple financial terms, demonstrate a clear ROI. Again, the answer is: Yes. Rather, I believe that the thus far reluctance in Western societies to deploy such systems en masse for consumer identification is more due to the banks’ concern of how such systems will be perceived by their clientele; the UK populace, for example, is ever suspicious of Big Brother, their governments and large institutions. However, these “perception barriers” are already lowering, and there is mounting evidence that public opposition, where clear benefit is realised, is eroding. Banks are now increasingly becoming aware of the value of biometric identification, of both their internal staff and their external clientele, especially in the area of high net-worth individuals and high-value transactions, and I expect we will see many exciting developments in identification solutions for this market.