FICO Report Shows Strong Support for Biometrics in the Philippines

FICO has released a new Consumer Digital Banking Survey that focuses on the Philippines. The report is part of an international series that has already made stops in Canada and the UK.

All three reports have generated similar results, insofar as they have revealed that while many people still have bad password habits, there is a growing support for more secure biometric authentication. For example, the Philippines survey specifically found that 14 percent of the respondents used one password for all of their accounts, while an additional 18 percent had a rotating list of two to five passwords. People with multiple passwords were also more likely to write their passwords down (29 percent) than they were to use an encrypted password manager (15 percent).  

That inevitably had an adverse impact on people’s online experiences. The majority (76 percent) of respondents would be willing to open some kind of digital banking account. Unfortunately, 18 percent had abandoned a new account opening with an existing provider because they couldn’t remember a password, and 32 percent had done the same during an online purchase.

However, 72 percent of the respondents would be willing to provide biometric information to their bank to streamline those security procedures. There was strong support for the use of behavioral biometrics (77 percent) and fingerprints (76 percent), while face and iris recognition were a bit less popular (40 and 23 percent, respectively). 

“Filipinos recognize that usernames and passwords are old technology,” said Subhashish Bose, FICO’s fraud and security lead for the Asia Pacific region. “They are willing and ready to adopt biometrics to secure their accounts.”

The FICO report noted that phishing and social engineering attacks have gone up as digital traffic has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. That should make digital security an even bigger priority for most consumers.  

“With social distancing restrictions still in place, most Filipinos are only able to access their finances digitally, so it’s essential for them to educate themselves and adopt security best practices,” added Bose.

Several other organizations have found similar evidence of bad password behavior. A recent LastPass survey found that as many as 66 percent of consumers use the same password on most or all of their accounts.

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July 7, 2020 – by Eric Weiss