Voice Biometrics Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

The voice biometrics market is expected to register a CAGR of 19.48% over the forecast period 2022 - 2027. The proliferation in the large-scale use of stolen data by professional fraudsters is rendering knowledge-based authentication increasingly inadequate for distinguishing legitimate users from fraudsters. This has led to the proliferation of biometric technologies. Voice biometrics is a versatile technology that finds use in several areas that include call center authentication, hands-free interface, bank account protection, and mobile application development.

Key Highlights

• With the increasing use of digital platforms for government and private services deployment and the race of financial firms to make banking simple and easier, there is an increasing need for a similar, strong, and secured authentication technology with negligible chances of failure. The market is already in a transition from traditional password authentication processes to password-less authentication techniques. Owing to its unique feature to identify every individual with different traits, voice recognition is gaining traction as one of the significant authentication techniques.
• The banking, automotive, and healthcare sectors are expected to be particularly important in that regard. Healthcare was the largest of the three in deploying voice recognition to assist with the creation of electronic medical records. Meanwhile, a growing number of banks are integrating voice authentication for an extra layer of security, especially for transactions that take place over the phone.
• Voice banking is conquering the financial industry, and FinTechs are competing to offer more advanced, robust, and secure solutions. The development of voice banking is predicted to move in several directions in the next couple of years. According to Intelligent Software Engineering, 18 million US consumers have already tried paying by voice, and many banks and financial institutions offer this service to their clients. The growth of voice banking is anticipated to provide growth to the market. The banking sector is expected to register a significant growth rate over the forecast period, owing to the higher adoption of voice recognition in mobile and web banking applications.
• The proficiency of a voice biometric system is dependent on successful speech identification and voice recognition and affects the overall performance of the solution. Many approaches are employed by researchers and corporations to identify voice features from a signal, including LPCC, MFCC, and LPC. The higher acceptability of the voice biometric system is credited to the efficiency of the solutions, accuracy and speed of identification, high product capabilities, low cost, and user-friendly nature.
• The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for voice biometrics as a contactless method of authentication and has positively influenced the demand-side dynamics of the studied market. According to the Biometric Survey 2021, 64% of the respondents have increased prioritization for technology that supports remote onboarding and mobile apps, which has created a direct demand for voice biometrics.

Key Market Trends

Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance have Emerged as the Leading Fields for Voice Biometric Applications

• Banks have to continuously stay on top of the best-suited methods for authentication to combat online fraud. Traditionally, banks have used knowledge-based authentication methods such as PINs, passwords, and one-time passwords. The demand for contactless and seamless technologies has permeated even banking security, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic's impact. Voice biometrics in banking is a promising online banking solution that goes beyond the retina and fingerprint scanners that require people's physical presence.
• Further, as attackers/hackers have become more sophisticated and the number of potential targets or entry points has expanded, cyber attacks in the financial industry have increased significantly. The sheer number of users has also drastically increased along with the continued proliferation and addition of new banking and financial technologies. Despite numerous warnings from bankers, people fall prey to scams. For instance, in fiscal 2021, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) reported around 7,400 bank fraud cases across India. In 2020, RBI reported 8,700 bank fraud cases in India with a total value of INR 1.85 trillion. Further, as per the information reported by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), a total number of 2,46,514 and 2,90,445 cyber security incidents pertaining to digital banking were reported in 2019 and 2020 in India, respectively.
• Also, according to VMware, the first half of 2020 witnessed a 238% increase in cyberattacks targeting financial institutions as compared to the previous year, and nearly 75% of banks and insurance groups witnessed a spike in cybercrime since the start of the pandemic.
• Voice biometrics in banking is crucial to extending comfortable banking services and improving customer experience. For instance, banks offer social security products like pensions and insurance requiring proof-of-life authentication when the payments are disbursed. Voice biometrics facilitate the discrete authentication of people. Also, biometric technology can identify several features of human voices to make identification reliable and tamper-proof.
• Voice biometrics also aid in enhancing the KYC processes. For instance, multilingual countries like South Asia have people of varying education levels across far-flung areas. Voice biometrics can help include such people into a financial security net as the solutions are language-independent.
• Further, physiological biometrics necessitates scanners at the customer's location, whereas voice biometrics require nothing more than existing phone lines and mobile infrastructure. The software is present on the bank's end. To create a sample to authenticate, the user may be asked to say a randomly generated phrase. If a match is not found, access will be denied. This method is effective against hackers who attempt to use voice recordings.

North America is Expected to Hold the Largest Share

• Voice recognition technology is used in various applications due to the rapid growth in the acceptance of mobile and cloud technologies and unmatched technological advancements in computing powers. The healthcare industry is expected to play a significant role in the growth of voice recognition technology in the United States, owing to its use in the production of health-related data records. Voice recognition technology has the potential to replace some of the more traditional approaches that are still in use.
• According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, United States, the National health spending is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 5.4% from 2019 to 2028 to reach USD 6.2 trillion by 2028. This also includes the expenditure for IT and computing services for better storage and protection of patient data. Furthermore, health systems are searching for voice-enabled transcriptions to identify reimbursable conditions discovered during the diagnostic while also ensuring that crucial health indicators are not missed.
• The lucrative banking sector in the region has seen a rise in the adoption of biometric technologies as the number of fraud cases has increased. In the region, many secure and diverse security solutions are being introduced. In North America, G+D Mobile Security has introduced its FIDO-compliant Convego Mobile Authentication in conjunction with Samsung SDS. To provide security solutions with multi-factor authentication, the solution leverages biometrics such as fingerprint, face, iris, and voice credentials.
• Several Canadian organizations, including Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Montreal, and Rogers Communications, have begun using speech biometrics to identify consumers over the phone. Customers can sign into their accounts or skip call center security questions by providing a voiceprint, according to the TD Bank Group of Canada. For this, TD uses VoicePrint. TD VoicePrint is a voice recognition system that allows customers to use their voiceprint to verify their identity and identify themselves when speaking with one of the bank's Live Customer Service employees over the phone.
• To better service customers, more stores in Canada are moving to self-checkout lanes. More than half of Canadians (54%) favor self-checkout lanes, and 66% use them at least some of the time, according to Dalhousie University's Grocery Experience National Survey Report. Customers can go at their own leisure in self-checkout lines, but they are not necessarily as efficient. As a result, many Canadian merchants are looking for voice biometrics solutions for use in their stores. However, due to the initial high cost of equipment and gadgets, many retailers in Canada will be unwilling to upgrade to the latest technologies.

Competitive Landscape

The voice biometrics narket remains a highly competitive market, with several emerging players that are getting into the biometric ecosystem. The market has witnessed a few mergers and acquisitions in the recent past. With the inflow of massive amounts of funds into the startups operating in this space, the launch of several new products is expected in the years ahead. Some of the recent developments are as follows:-

• August 2021 - Lumen Vox launched the next-generation automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine with transcription. The new automatic speech recognition engine, built on a foundation of artificial intelligence (AI) and deep machine learning (ML), outpaces its competition in delivering the most accurate speech-enabled customer experiences.
• July 2021 - Thales announced a new voice biometric solution, which is part of Thales’ Digital Identity Service Platform for onboarding and authentication. The new solution integrates effortlessly with existing call center enrolment processes.
• June 2021 - Aculab announced that its voice biometrics technology, VoiSentry, can be deployed to those with physical and speech impairments. VoiSentry calculates voice biometrics based on general characteristics of the sound of the voice rather than specific words. Hence, it enables the user to positively affirm IVR choices and complete identification and verification checks using their voice.

Additional Benefits:

• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
• 3 months of analyst support

This product will be delivered within 2 business days.