Banks Looking to Biometrics, Document Reading to Fight Fraud: Survey

OneSpan has published a new survey that suggests that safe and convenient digital onboarding is an increasingly important priority for major banks. The survey was published in collaboration with the Information Security Media Group, and reflects the concerns of banking and security representatives from hundreds of leading financial institutions.

Digging into the details, the OneSpan report found that the vast majority (85 percent) of respondents had experienced fraud that was in some way related to their digital account opening process. Approximately half of those respondents attributed that fraud directly to security shortcomings in the process itself, with roughly the same number admitting that their digital account opening process was only somewhat or not secure.

On the other hand, banks were wary of solutions that would add too much friction to their onboarding procedures. The majority believed that customers were more likely to abandon the account opening process if they had a poor user experience.

That’s why most respondents were hoping to find a way to offer a better user experience while reducing application fraud over the course of the coming year. The majority were already planning to invest in technologies like document recognition and biometrics (including behavioral biometrics) in an effort to provide safer and better service.

“The digital revolution has shifted the way consumers want to engage with their financial institutions, away from in-person toward immediate and convenient remote transactions,” said OneSpan CEO Scott Clements. “There no longer needs to be a trade-off between security and a positive customer experience.”

The survey results are not particularly surprising given the rising rates of application fraud, especially when paired with a 2019 OneSpan report that found that most financial institutions were still relying on outdated security practices and vulnerable legacy systems. OneSpan has been working to address the problem with its own security portfolio, most notably with the release a new fully automated onboarding solution in June. The Secure Agreement Automation platform was designed specifically for financial institutions.

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March 19, 2020 – by Eric Weiss