Singapore leads the global adoption of fingerprint biometrics and voice recognition technologies to authenticate a customer’s identity in the financial services sector, according to a new international study “Leaders in Financial Services are Experts in Customer Identity” commissioned by identity data intelligence specialist GBG and conducted by Forrester Consulting.
The study surveyed 315 traditional firms as well as fintechs and challengers across the globe in Singapore, China, Australia, the UK, and the US, to examine customer experience maturity and found that Singapore leads in certain areas of customer identity technologies.
In terms of fingerprint biometrics, Singapore comes in first (61 percent) ahead of China (57 percent), Australia (50 percent) the UK (40 percent) and the US (37 percent). The country also surpasses other markets as the global leader in the adoption of voice recognition, with 56 percent of firms indicating that they have either implemented this, or are expanding or upgrading their technologies, compared to Australia (52 percent), China (49 percent) the US (49 percent) and the UK (33 percent).
The research identified Singapore firms as consistently competitive, coming second to China in the adoption of social media data and behavioural monitoring to authenticate a customer’s identity, and behind only Australia in the implementation of facial recognition biometrics. Singapore (89 percent) is also close to the US (92 percent) when it comes to firms placing a high or critical priority on improving the experience of customers.
As digital, technology-led innovation redefines every aspect of financial services, the study further revealed:
- At 91 percent, the top priority for firms in Singapore over the next 12 months is improving their ability to innovate
- 79 percent of Singapore firms are planning to increase their spending on digital customer experience in the next 12 months
- 41 percent of Singapore firms strongly agree they have the necessary people and skills to execute their customer-centric strategy – a higher percentage than any other market
However, according to the Forrester study, customer identification is a widespread issue among financial service firms globally. In Singapore, 89 percent of firms expressed concern with their ability to identify customers.
The top two reasons cited include the lack of a comprehensive data management strategy to create a single view of the customer and poor integration of business applications and technology platforms which make it difficult to share information internally or externally.
Zooming out on financial services in APAC, the study also found that firms in the region trump their counterparts in the UK and US in terms of adoption of fingerprint biometrics and emerging technologies such as blockchain and robotic process automation.
While Singapore is behind the rest of APAC when it comes to enabling customers to carry out onboarding processes online, Singaporean firms are the keenest on implementing a fully-online process within the next 12 months.
Glenn Porter, Managing Director at GBG said,
“Although Singapore is leading the way in adopting particular advanced technologies to authenticate customers’ identities, firms need to ensure they are globally competitive and address increasing customer expectations. Technologies such as electronic document capture, social media data, and behavioral monitoring make it quicker, easier and safer to open accounts and transact online than ever before.
Many firms will need to look to move away from legacy processes – especially when it comes to customer onboarding – and look to collaborate with partners that can support the integration of innovative technologies.”
The study can be downloaded here.
