How Voice Biometrics Became a Real Game-Changer at a Large Financial Services Organization
By: Colleen Martin
Tags: Passwords, Cybersecurity, Financial Services, MFA, Verification

Voice biometrics, or voiceprint technology, has started gaining significant traction within the financial services industry. And for good reason. Passwords alone are no longer sufficient for protecting business-critical assets and applications. Instead, voiceprint technology instantly recognizes the voice patterns unique to each individual and can authenticate access securely. Industries like financial services are moving away from using passwords for account access and toward secure biometric authentication that is fast, convenient, secure, and cost effective. Voice biometrics requires only a microphone as an input device that is already built into smartphones, which more than 3.5 billion people, or approximately 45 percent of the global population, already use worldwide.

Voiceprint technology can also be used as part of two-factor or multi-factor (MFA) authentication, which leverages an identity verification process using multiple identifiers for authentication. This can include challenge-response questions or one-time passcodes through SMS/text message. Whatever form it takes, one thing is certain. Leveraging voice biometrics is smart business and it’s why many financial services organizations are starting to adopt this technology.

A Unique Deployment of Voice Biometrics

One organization stands out in its innovative use and deployment of voice biometrics. As a leading provider of financial services to institutional investors, the large financial services organization operates in more than 100 geographic markets with nearly 40,000 employees globally. What is unique about the company is that it is using voice biometrics for front-end authentication through its computer-telephony integration (CTI) — an intelligent way to integrate its enterprise integrated voice response (IVR) unit with a telephone-based solution.

Simply, if an employee calls into the computerized voice system within the organization, the individual is asked to authenticate his or her identity through the voiceprint technology offered from Core Password. Once authenticated, the employee receives a menu of options to choose from, including accessing the helpdesk support team. So now, the organization has an intelligent, integrated mechanism in place to perform a secure authentication on the front end before an individual even reaches the helpdesk for support, eliminating the manual authentication process.

The Big Impact to Security, Cost Savings, and Productivity

The reason the company’s use of voice biometrics is such a game-changer is because of its tremendous impact to security, cost savings, and productivity across the business. Let’s take a look at these three elements in more detail:

#1: The Impact to Security

By leveraging a front-end authentication method, the organization has enhanced security by validating who is on the other side for requests. As attacks within organizations from social engineering become more prevalent, it is difficult to verify the identity of individuals seeking to unlock accounts or gain access to privileges. By using voice authentication as a single identifier or part of a multi-factor solution, organizations can increase security by fully authenticating who is requesting support or access. In the case of the financial services organization, ensuring employees are who they say they are before they are presented a menu of options or before they reach the helpdesk has significantly mitigated risks and improved overall security within the company.

#2: The Impact to Cost Savings

In such a large, global organization, requests for support are high. In fact, the company, on average, receives more than 30,000 calls per month, or around just under 400,000 calls annually. Each time the organization deflects calls and provides employees the ability to self-serve through its voice biometrics solution, it saves approximately $10 per call, which is a substantial savings to the organization annually. However, if helpdesk support is still needed, eliminating the time for manual authentication during the initial call set up also saves time and money, and provides considerable cost savings to the company.

#3: The Impact to Productivity

Organizations that rely on helpdesk support teams to assist with mundane, repetitive, low-level tasks, like resetting a password or unlocking an account, prevent their support teams from working on more critical business issues. However, in the voice biometrics solution deployed by the financial services organization, the helpdesk is freed up to focus on higher priority issues, increasing the value and contribution it provides to the company. Additionally, the organization has also prevented losses to productivity — both to helpdesk workers who are unable to support on higher priority issues and to the employee who requires support and assistance to access his or her account.

Unlike other organizations that are using voice biometrics solely for password resets, the financial services organization has recognized the value that an expanded solution can have integrating with its existing technology on security, cost savings, and productivity. The lessons from this company showcase how an enhanced approach can lead to greater efficiencies across the business and become a real game-changer for the organization. As the company continues to leverage the voice biometrics solution from Core Security, which is considered a leader in identity governance and access management, it will continue to embrace leading-edge solutions and enable the company to operate at an even higher level of operational efficiency.

Start Calculating Your Savings

Want to know how much your organization could save by implementing a more effective password management solution? Many organizations that use self-service options typically reduce helpdesk call volume by 30 to 60 percent. If you are ready to empower users, improve internal customer satisfaction, and increase overall productivity, then take a moment to calculate your savings with our free savings calculator.