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Personalised service through facial recognition

NEC has announced the successful testing and rollout of a facial recognition system at OCBC Bank’s Holland Village branch to identify Premier Banking customers. OCBC Bank is one of the first in Singapore’s banking sector to adopt such a system as part of its digital efforts to improve service excellence.

Facial recognition is a growing form of biometrics used to identify and authenticate persons in a wide range of industries. With the widespread usage and acceptance in immigration systems, and secured identity card systems, biometrics is now expanding into commercial applications (e.g. banking, retail etc.).

Implemented since 4 December 2017, the system instantly identifies OCBC Premier Banking customers in real-time as they approach the lounge in the branch without needing to stop to look at the camera. This is a very non-intrusive approach for the bank to identify them.

Based on the VIP identification, the system allows the Premier Service Manager (PSM) to promptly identify and greet customers by their preferred name, offer them their preferred drinks and magazines, and, understanding their visit records, to promptly deliver services, giving the client a more personalised and pleasant customer journey.

The bank can record the purpose of a customer’s visit, gather feedback to help improve services, and understand customer behaviour patterns, such as the frequency of their visits.

The system utilises NeoFace, NEC’s AI engine for face recognition. NeoFace is recognised as the fastest and most accurate facial recognition algorithm in the world by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States ( http://www.nec.com/en/press/201703/global_20170316_01.html).

The NeoFace engine can be used for a variety of applications and scenarios such as:

• Access control and attendance tracking for staff and visitors in different areas.

• Workstation/console login for more secured access.

• Customer authentication for transactions as a second-factor on different channels of financial institutions.

• Seamless online transaction experience using facial recognition for payment authentication.

• For safety reasons; monitoring for individuals on watch lists or tracking people who loiter on the premises.

• Fraud prevention with NEC’s ‘liveness’ detection.

• Tailored advertising signage and marketing material using facial recognition to understand the age and gender of patrons.

“OCBC is committed to our service quality and implementing facial recognition to elevate the customer experience is one of the first steps that we are doing in the digital economy. Since introducing it, we received positive feedback from customers who were impressed by the personalised hospitality enabled by fast and accurate identification. Going forward, we will evaluate and consider the extension of the capability beyond customer service,” said Pranav Seth, SVP, head of E-business, business transformation and fintech & innovation group, OCBC Bank.

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