ABN AMRO

Business Profile.

ABN AMRO is a major international bank with origins dating back to 1824. The institution's head office is located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and operates over 3,000 branches in around 60 countries and territories. The bank's four million Dutch retail customers generate over 35 million calls per year to ABN AMRO's telephone banking system.

Solution Overview

ABN AMRO wanted to further enhance the customer's telephone banking experience by simplifying the identity verification process. VoiceVault's Caller Authentication has been selected to replace the existing PIN-based process with biometric voice based identity verification. Callers simply speak their account number and personalised shared secret.

Value Generated

VoiceVault Caller Authentication will enable ABN AMRO's customers to quickly and more conveniently access their accounts and places the bank at the forefront of customer service technology innovation. VoiceVault technology also enhances the accuracy of the bank's speech recognition software, which results in fewer calls being handed-off to call centre operatives.

ABN AMRO gets vocal about biometric caller authentication

One-of-a-kind VoiceVault voice verification technology provides bank customers with convenient, efficient and secure access to their accounts

Banking customers around the world are increasingly demanding easier and more instantaneous access to their accounts. Direct channels such as the Internet and telephone banking are the norm and provide customers with 24/7 banking services. Identity is usually verified with a PIN (personal identification number) along with a series of security questions and account details. However, these details can be forgotten and this can cause customer inconvenience and increased costs. In addition, some customers may expose themselves to the risk of fraud or identity theft if they store identity information in a diary, wallet or handbag.

Biometric voice verification addresses these problems. The VoiceVault biometric engine uses speech to calculate more than 100 measurements of an individual's vocal tract, which includes characteristics of the lungs, nasal cavity, throat and so on. Taken together, all of these measurements create a unique biometric voiceprint. A series of highly sophisticated algorithms are then used to compare a caller's previously stored voiceprint with the 'live' version to quickly and reliably verify a caller's identity.

Challenge: Deliver an enjoyable end-user experience

The majority of ABN AMRO's customers prefer direct banking channels: a typical customer will only visit their branch once a year. The bank receives more than 35 million calls per year from its Dutch retail customers, 80% of which use a PIN number for customer authentication.

ABN AMRO is dedicated to employing innovative technology to provide the highest quality of service to its customers. As part of its own continuous improvement practices, the bank wanted to further enhance their customer's experience of direct channel, automated banking services.

Initial research by ABN AMRO identified voice verification as a technology that could provide an easier way for customers to access their accounts . In addition, enabling the customer to speak their account number, rather than typing it into the phone could improve the overall process.

"We wanted to enhance the customer experience," said Richard Molenaar, Vice-President of Project Management for Direct Channels at ABN AMRO. "However, as the service was to be used for transactions such as transferring money or purchasing shares, there was no room for error. Security was paramount - any new system had to be extremely robust and meet our stringent standards."

ABN AMRO established a project to investigate voice verification and to set out the criteria for supplier and system selection. A number of voice verification system providers were invited to take part in a formal evaluation and selection process, which included on-site visits to existing users both in Europe and the US. At the end of a three month evaluation process, VoiceVault was selected for its technical capabilities and the sophistication of its underlying biometric verification engine.

VoiceVault speaks sophistication

The core VoiceVault technology is very different from other voice-based identification systems that rely on comparing stored recordings. VoiceVault uses spoken words to calculate a series of measurements of the caller's vocal tract. Sophisticated algorithms convert these measurements into a voice print - a unique digital representation of an individual's voice.

VoiceVault can accurately verify a caller using voice alone. However, an extra level of security is provided with a two factor authentication process ('something you are and something you know'). VoiceVault supports this two-factor authentication through its personalised shared secrets capability. The caller records their own unique secret question and answer at enrolment. Thereafter, when calling the bank, the customer will hear their own voice ask their own secret question. This process is highly personalised to the customer, and since they choose their own question, there is less risk of the answer being forgotten. VoiceVault checks both the answer given and uses the spoken words for biometric voice verification.

Proving the concept

Biometric Security established a project team with ABN AMRO to set up a wide-scale pilot. VoiceVaults hosted service was used for the pilot - rather than the Bank installing licensed software. This reduced the set up time and enabled more rapid progress to be achieved.

An extensive test programme was defined and split into distinct stages. Each phase tested specific attributes of the system in a logical and structured manner and employed a methodology that delivered statistically valid results.

The scale of the testing ABN AMRO conducted meant that special attention had to be given to the recruitment and management of pilot participants. In total, the pilot involved the participation of 1,450 individuals - of which 1,300 were employees and 150 customers. Tests included members of the same family (siblings) as well as 6 sets of identical twins. Over 25,000 calls were made by the participants during the pilot.

"We looked at every possible way we could try to fool the system," explained Molenaar. "We used relatives with similar voices; we tried people with colds and had users calling at all different hours as your voice can change much over the course of the day or night. We also tested callers using different types of phones and noisy backgrounds."

The verification speech samples recorded during the 25,000 'live' calls were used to generate a further 10 million automated verification tests. Special algorithms were used to carry out these tests in a statistically meaningful manner.

VoiceVault was also used to enhance the recognition accuracy of ABN AMRO 3rd party speech recognition engine. This increased the recognition accuracy of a 9 digit spoken account number from around 90% to nearly 100%.

At the end of each phase, ABN AMRO and Biometric Security's project teams met to review the results and agreed on modifications to the configuration of the verification engine.

The results of the pilot showed that VoiceVault voice verification performance exceeded ABN AMRO security requirements before factoring in the additional security of the secret question.

End user feedback

All 1,300 employee participants were surveyed and the feedback from the pilot was overwhelmingly positive. "We were concerned that our own employees were going to be more demanding in their expectations than actual customers would be," said Molenaar. However, employees considered the solution to be more straightforward, convenient and secure than the existing system.

Customer participants were also surveyed with positive results. Over 83% indicated that they would prefer to use voice verification over the existing PIN-based process.

Next Steps

ABN AMRO has now decided to implement the system and make it available to its customer base. "Customers will not be forced to use voice verification - it will be offered as an alternative to the existing process," explained Molenaar.

"We have also decided to make the pilot service fully 'live' for a number of the pilot participants, which will enable them to conduct various account enquiries and buy and sell stocks and shares without further verification," he added.

Planning and implementation work will now commence to put in place internal procedures and customer communication programs for a wider roll-out.