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What Motivates APAC Banks to Follow a Biometric Action Plan

Banking CIO Outlook | Thursday, August 20, 2020

The increasing prevalence of biometric and digital identities is helping APAC banks to offer consumers with improved security and enhanced mobile banking experience.   

FREMONT, CA: Billions of customers are shifting to digital platforms to fulfill their banking needs, and it is becoming essential for banks to offer an optimized mobile platform for delivering secure authentication. Biometric technology today is second nature to many mobile users in the APAC region. As the demand for unparalleled security is still a headlining topic in the banking industry, biometric authentication addresses the consumer demand for data protection and privacy. With banking fraud in the APAC region highly increasing, the financial institutions are under pressure to implement stronger security solutions, and biometrics seems to be the most viable option. Banks are rethinking mobile banking security with a biometric action plan. Here are the reasons why banks in the APAC region are finding it more comfortable to incorporate biometric authentication into their mobile banking strategy.

• Powerful Security Assurance   

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The use of personal identification number as the sole security means by APAC banks was positioning their consumers as easy targets for cyber attackers. But today, they are considering multi-factor authentication by combining biometric features. This move makes it extremely difficult for a hacker to infiltrate customer accounts. Mobile banking users will likely see biometric identification paired with personal identification numbers and passwords for two factored authentication before manual logins are obsolete. Ever since technology introduced fingerprint scanning, using physical characteristics as a form of authentication to access has proven to be very successful.

• Increased Customer Convenience

Today, banks are in a race to deliver frictionless mobile experiences focused on adding value to customer experience. Convenience has become a defining factor in the development of biometrics among APAC banks. To stay relevant to customers, banks are pushing the boundaries of biometric technology to address specific user pain points. They are using biometric authentication to address various customer behaviors and remove friction from mobile banking experience. APAC banks incorporating biometric authentication into their mobile banking strategy not only addresses security concerns of their users, but it also acts as a jumping point for enhanced user experience.

• Biometric as a Service 

Biometric as a Service (BaaS) option is a valid reason for APAC banks to leverage biometrics. Banks can use this service as a subscription-based service —instead of deploying software and storing biometric data— to integrate biometric know your customer and authentication capabilities it into existing systems and processes. BaaS platforms are providing banks with enrollment and duplicate identity detection, mobile biometric, biometric liveliness and spoof detection functions. All these functionalities are allowing banks to deliver comfortable and secure mobile banking experience to their customers while fulfilling regulatory obligations.

• Streamlined Operations and Reduced Costs

Traditional security approaches cost APAC banks a lot of money each year. Banks increasingly find biometric strategies as a perfect solution to bring down this cost. Biometric helps banks detect anomalies and suspicious behaviors with a much higher degree of accuracy and an extremely low rate of false positives. This leads to significant cost reductions for banks. Minimizing false alarms and automating fraud detection and prevention process streamline banking operations.

APAC banks work towards becoming digitally proficient at catering to mobile banking customers. In this journey ahead, the success of mobile banking will be measured by how well they select features that encourage mobile engagement and preserve trust throughout the banking journey. Biometric authentication is sure to play a significant part in this by making banking activities more secure, efficient and convenient.

Check out: Top Identity and Access Management Solution Companies in Europe

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