Unisys: Filipinos Trust Banks, but Remain Wary of Behavioral Biometrics

Unisys has released the results of its 2019 Asia Pacific Banking study, finding that customers in the Philippines place the most trust in banks as an institution. They also considered security to be the single most important factor when choosing where to bank.

Digging into the numbers, 63 percent of respondents named security as a top priority, whereas only 54 percent cared about efficient service and even fewer (36 percent) cared about transparency. As a result, the vast majority (more than 80 percent) of respondents were fine with the use of fingerprint or facial authentication for mobile apps or ATMs, although they were less comfortable (53 percent) with behavioral biometrics.  

“The lower level of support for behavioral biometrics is likely driven by a combination of less familiarity and an unwillingness to be monitored on an ongoing basis,” said Ian Selbie, Unisys Asia Pacific’s Industry Director of Financial Services. “If banks want their customers to embrace behavioral based identity authentication they will need to convince them that the benefit of security is worth forgoing some level of privacy.”

Filipinos were twice as likely to choose a bank over the government as their most trusted institution (42 to 21 percent). However, they were skeptical of card networks (15 percent), and the younger generation (those aged 18-34) had less trust in banks thank their elder compatriots, indicating that companies like Zwipe and Allcard will need to work to keep that trust from eroding further.

“As open banking is rolled out across Asia, banks will need to demonstrate that they are protecting their customer data across all parties involved in the banking service supply chain,” said Selbie.

The study surveyed respondents from Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Taiwan in addition to the Philippines. The announcement of its results comes after Unisys recently launched the Stealth(Identity) biometric management platform for enterprise level clients.   

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March 22, 2019 – by Eric Weiss