NEC’s facial recognition system elevates customer experience at OCBC Bank

NEC Asia Pacific and NEC Corporation today announced the successful testing and roll-out 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 unintrusive 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 personalized and pleasant customer journey.

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

The system utilizes NeoFace, NEC’s AI engine for face recognition.

NeoFace is recognized as the fastest and most accurate algorithm in the world by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States*, greatly exceeding all other vendors in both accuracy and speed.

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 2^nd 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 personalized hospitality enabled by fast and accurate identification. Going forward, we will evaluate and consider the extension of the capability beyond customer service,” said Mr. Pranav Seth, SVP, Head of E-business, Business Transformation and Fintech & Innovation group, OCBC Bank.

“We are pleased to work with OCBC Bank to provide this cutting-edge facial recognition solution to help improve the overall delivery of services to their valued clientele. We hope that through this co-creation we have helped OCBC Bank stay competitive in this fast-paced industry where customer experience is key. Moving ahead, we look forward to exploring more innovative and meaningful ideas to help customers digitally transform their businesses through artificial intelligence that includes biometrics and facial recognition,” said Lim Kok Quee, Managing Director and Deputy CEO (ASEAN Sub-Region) of NEC Asia Pacific.

NEC has been engaged in the development of facial recognition technology for over 30 years. NeoFace® is currently implemented in more than 40 countries by a wide range of public and private organizations.