TrendGrowing interest in voice biometrics

Published 17 June 2008

U.K. financial institutions seriously consider voice recognition technology as a way to combat ID fraud; about 20 million Britons are expected to register for some form of voice ID by the end of next year

If it works for your blog, why not your bank? This blog is created by using the Dragon NaturallySpeaking software from Nuance. Just dictate away and typo-free text appears on the screen. WebProNews’s Barry Welford writes that it works effectively and rarely makes a mistake. “It really is very impressive. It is one of the reasons why I believe that speech technology is the killer app for the mobile web,” he writes. There are many recent news items to support that belief. One of the most dramatic is that banks in the United Kingdom will be using voice IDs. The main British banks plan to introduce voice recognition over the next year as a way of deterring card fraudsters, according to speech software specialist Nuance as reported in Personal Computer World. Ian Turner, general manager for Nuance’s operations in northern Europe, said: “By the end of next year, about 20 million people in the U.K. will be registered with some kind of system.” He said voice recognition can be 97 percent accurate, but it is always used with some other form of identification, such as a password. He added that even good mimics cannot fool the system.

Nuance provides one of the major voice-biometric systems on the market. A recent survey commissioned by Nuance indicated that most people are in favour of multi-factor identification systems, including voice biometrics.