National Australia Bank Launches Customer-Facing Voice Biometric Service

Australia continues to be a hotbed for the latest in voice biometrics announcements. In another widely rumored deployment, National Australia Bank (NAB) has officially launched a voice verification service, making it available to the company’s 3.3 million personal banking customers.

Aimed at “delivering enhanced customer experience and security,” the public deployment comes after NAB ran a successful internal pilot involving 2,000 branch staff in May. The voice biometrics-based service is part of a multi-million dollar effort to upgrade a range of new security functions available to NAB personal banking customers.

According to a company statement, “With identity theft related fraud increasingly moving to the phone channel, the use of voice biometrics enables the effective identification, authentication and verification of customers, offering an extra layer of protection,” said Warren Shaw, executive general manager with NAB Personal Banking.

Successful authentication pilot programs have long been rumored for financial services organizations, but NAB’s official launch marks the first bank – both in Australia and globally – to go public with a large-scale, customer-facing service. More to come…