Insurer claims world's largest voice biometric verification

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 26 June 2007 12:48

Your IT - Home IT

Health insurer Australian Health Management (ahm) has registered more than 10,000 of its members in a biometric voice verification system, which it says is the world's largest commercial implementation.

The health fund has adopted voice verification to reduce the time taken by contact centre agents to establish callers' identities. 80 percent of calls require the identification and verification of the caller, and the use of VeCommerce's VeSecure biometric system is saving an average of 30 seconds per call with a consequent reduction in call waiting times.

In addition, it means callers avoid the risk of being overheard when giving personally identifying information to the agent in public or semi-public spaces such as offices.

"On average, 125 members per day are voluntarily registering for the voice verification through a simple registration process," said Melinda Charlesworth, ahm operations manager. "Once they've done this, the next time that member calls, they simply say their membership number. They are then transferred straight through to an agent who knows who they are and that they have been securely verified."

"As the quality of the VeCommerce platform is so high, we've had overwhelmingly positive feedback to date as people don't need to go through their ID checks every time they want to speak with us," she added.