In the coming weeks when the customer calls up in ICICI Bank and introduce himself ,within 10 seconds the bank’s server will identify his account details and authenticate his identity. A voice sample will be taken and will be matched with the database.

ICICI Bank has become the first in the country to deploy voice recognition technology for biometric authentication.

“The software uses 100 parameters for matching sound samples. To collect the sample, the servers need to record only 35 seconds of voice during any conversation. Besides authentication, the software will help the bank in analytics as it will immediately inform the operator about the state of mind of the caller,” said Rajiv Sabharwal,the executive director, ICICI Bank.

“If we were to use other biometrics like fingerprint or iris, we would need to deploy scanners. In the case of voice recognition, any call from a basic phone to the call centre is good enough. Since the voice samples and servers are in the call centre, there is no requirement for data connectivity,” said Rajiv Sabharwal.