HSBC report finds UK leading in adopting biometric banking technologies

HSBC published a new report based on a survey of 12,000 people in 11 countries which found that only 46 percent of respondents trusted fingerprint recognition to replace their traditional password, according to a report by The Financial Times.

The report found that despite banks’ lengthy efforts to roll out biometric authentication, many customers neither understand nor trust in the new technologies.

However, the survey results found that people in the UK were far more open to adopting new biometric technology in banking.

“When it comes to biometrics . . . the UK is very willing to adopt certain measures, the report said, revealing that UK consumers were the most open to replacing traditional passwords with iris identification.

Several banks in the UK have introduced biometric technology in the past couple years for both customer authentication and banking services, such as Santander UK, which launched a voice biometric service earlier this year.

The HSBC report also found that cybersecurity was the most important requirement for UK consumers, who ranked it the highest for taking day-to-day measures to ensure their personal data were safe.

Some 87 percent of respondents around the world felt that keeping their finances secure was as critical as protecting their personal data, according to the report

The report also revealed that twice as many people — 14 percent — would trust a robot to perform heart surgery than to open a bank savings account for them.

Last week it was revealed that BBC Click reporter Dan Simmons and his non-identical twin successfully duped HSBC’s voice ID authentication software, designed to prevent bank fraud.

Andy Maguire, HSBC chief operating officer, said the bank’s voice biometric software had prevented more fraud compared to traditional authentication methods such as PINs and passwords.

“It’s very convenient and a much better customer experience,” he said. “We have made some tweaks to the security settings as a result, and we’re going to carefully monitor that we’re not causing problems for legitimate customers.”

Article Topics

banking  |  biometrics  |  iris identification  |  UK  |  voice recognition