National Australia Bank considering behavioral biometrics for fraud prevention

National Australia Bank is discussing how to leverage biometric technology to protect customers from new kinds of financial crime, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

The NAB has held discussion with two Israeli artificial intelligence and biometrics companies, according to the report, and has already run a pilot with a biometrics provider to identify suspicious behavior, indicating that it is a behavioral biometrics company like BioCatch, though the group is not identified in the report.

BioCatch announced several new tier-one bank customers in Latin America had signed on for its fraud-prevention technology in October.

AI big data company SparkBeyond is also reported to be close to a deal with the NAB. The NAB has increased its development of AI, big data, and biometric technologies as part of an effort to modernize its systems. Australia’s banking royal commission criticized the country’s big banks recently for poor fraud detection capabilities. The biometrics provider the NAB is in talks with offers a solution for preventing identity takeovers, money laundering, and other financial crime.

“They have built a solution that is the most sophisticated identity management because it’s about how a customer behaves,” says NAB Chief Customer Experience Officer Rachel Slade. “It knows how you use your phone, whether you use your left hand or right hand and how you navigate through a payment so it knows instantly if it’s someone pretending to be you.”

Slade says the approach is preferable to monitoring transactions for financial crime by building giant systems.

The global market for behavioral biometrics is expected to grow rapidly to $4 billion by 2025, according to a recent report from Allied Market Research.

Article Topics

Australia  |  banking  |  behavioral biometrics  |  BioCatch  |  biometrics  |  fraud prevention  |  identity management