Speed Up customer Onboarding with Online Facial Recognition

Banks are spending loads to digitize their operations. The competition is mounting, plus, people are downloading non-banking apps to buy and transfer money. This is forcing banks to compromise and share customer data with Fintech companies. But speeding things up can create security problems. Online facial recognition can help banks take customers onboard much faster without compromising security.    

What is facial recognition software?

It is a biometric software that uses facial recognition to ‘map’ a person’s face. It stores facial features as mathematical data called the faceprint.

Usually, such software uses deep learning algorithms to match a live or digital image with the saved faceprint (learn the basics of how facial recognition software work).

Google’s Image Search

With the Google image search engine, you can find matching images online. Simply go to the image search bar, click the camera icon and upload your desired image. Searching this way will show you the matching or similar images.

Facial Recognition can help Banks Get More Customers

Financial regulatory authorities want banks and similar firms to onboard only those individuals that they know.

This knowledge has a technical meaning. For instance, banks should know the profession of a person that wants to open an account or invest in a company. If illegal money is stored or transferred or invested through them, they are responsible.

Know Your Customer

Know Your Customer or KYC is a compliance process that helps banks to officially know their customers.

Although the specifics of KYC vary from industry to industry, however, the main features are;

• Customer Acceptance Policy
• Customer Identification Procedures
• Monitoring of Transactions
• Risk management

Conventional KYC requires a lot of paperwork. By making KYC electronic (e-KYC), banks can streamline the otherwise lengthy process. Naturally, the online verification of biometrics will be extremely useful here.

Which Banks are using Online Facial Recognition for Customer Onboarding?

In early 2019, New Zealand’s ASB ran a pilot project to onboard new customers online. They removed the obligation of visiting a branch. Not surprisingly, they used biometric facial recognition technology.

ASB’s technique was basic. The bank matched customer’s pictures with their uploaded driver’s license.

Spain-based France’s Boursorama Financial Services Group plans to run a similar process through its subsidiary Self Bank. The difference from ABS will be the use of video-conferencing. The basics (biometrics and electronic signatures) will be the same.

Besides big names, a huge number of Fintech firms have been using online verification for some time.

How does facial recognition Help in KYC Compliance?

Customer identification is the core of KYC. Physically, the facial recognition is performed the way the security at the airport; they match your face with the picture on your passport.  

Technology does the same but faster. You might open an account at a bank using just your phone. This would require you to open its camera and show your face, then, upload a government-issued ID.

Recognizing facial patterns, in-depth 3D sensing, detecting liveness and texture, machine learning algorithms will match your face with the one on your passport, driver’s license or other official documents.

Will online facial recognition reduce processing time?

Yes. The conventional mode requires so much paperwork. Online verification might reduce the processing time to mere minutes, especially if banks are using contemporary artificial intelligence algorithms.

Looking forward…

We want things fast. Imagine your browsing speed slows down by a mere second, you will feel it. The same goes for banking services. We want transactions today, purchased items delivered the same day if not within the next hour.  

Banks should and will be using digital face recognition in the near future on a massive scale. This will not only help accelerate onboarding new customers but it will also assist the existing customers to log in to their accounts securely.

Banks need to speed things up while maintaining due diligence. Those that will efficiently manage both will excel, the rest will bite the dust. This is why banks are either readily buying the budding Fintech companies or developing software in-house that can assist with ID data and biometrics.