Although financial institutions have defended against fraudulent transactions for many years, attacks by professional fraudsters are growing rapidly. Additionally, the fraudsters’ methods, tools and organized efforts are getting more sophisticated. Losses related to fraudulent activity—like account takeovers and fraudulent credit card transactions—can reach tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. The need for fraud prevention and authentication to help secure customer accounts has intensified, driving organizations worldwide to seek out and invest in technology and services that better detect fraudsters, reduce fraud losses, mitigate risk and improve the customer experience.
In 2014 there is an opportunity for large global financial institutions to evolve their defensive measures and adopt “Identity 2.0”—augmenting the contact center’s authentication process with predictive analytics across voice biometric, account, call and other metadata. Verifying identity becomes not just a fixed question-and-answer process, but a complex analysis performed “on the spot” across multiple factors. By analyzing an interaction via a combination of “voiceprint” screening and other predictive factors, financial institutions can stop more attacks and fraudulent transactions, better identify and track known fraudsters, and improve the authentication process for legitimate customers.
While contact centers work continuously to reduce unauthorized account access, they must be careful not to negatively impact the overall customer experience. Historically, voice biometric solutions were deployed as a standalone solution—without incorporating other factors—and required caller interruption in order to be somewhat successful. These offerings were discontinued mainly due to their effect on the customer experience. In contrast, by combining with other factors in the overall predictive analysis, the voice biometrics of Identity 2.0 can operate passively—without customer interruption. This enables banks to silently stop fraudsters while accurately authenticating legitimate customers at scale, improving not only security but also customer satisfaction.
In order to be effective beyond the short term, financial institutions need solutions that evolve in response to the ever-changing nature of fraudulent attacks. These Identity 2.0 technologies will utilize multiple forms of biometrics and predictive analytics, and other tools like speech and text analytics, to keep pace with customer needs while thwarting unauthorized access.
Jenni Palocsik is Marketing Director, Retail Financial Services, for Verint, a provider of customer-centric workforce optimization and voice of the customer solutions. Follow Jenni on Twitter: @jpalocsik