Standard Chartered Introducing Biometrics to AAME

Standard Chartered is launching biometric technologies in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. These include fingerprint and voice biometrics that are designed to make banking easier and safer for its five million clients in the regions. This service is already available in India, United Arab Emirates and Singapore. This follows the launch of video banking to its AAME clients. The bank’s customers in those regions will soon be able to access its mobile banking platform on smartphones and iPads. Last year, Standard Chartered said it was going to spend $1.5 billion over the next three years to improve its technology.

Standard Chartered is set to unveil these services once it gets regulatory approval in those countries. The new countries and regions to benefit from these services will include China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Pakistan in Asia. In Africa, the countries are Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The biometrics upgrade will give clients access to their accounts and investments wherever they are and at any time, according to a statement from Standard Chartered’s CEO of retail banking, Karen Fawcett.

This will be a welcome addition to Standard Chartered’s Bank on an iPad, otherwise known as Retail Workbench. It is a sales and service tool already operational in AAME. The offering was launched on a large scale across Asia, Africa and the Middle East in March, although it had been operational in South Korea for two years. Retail Workbench allows sales teams open new accounts for clients wherever they are. They can also issue credit cards, make loan approvals and carryout other banking services without going back to a physical office. The bank wants to transition to a more digitally progressive platform, which will make banking quicker, easier and more responsive. These new technologies aim to reduce banking transaction times, cut costs in the long-run and modernise banking operations in some of the countries they cater to.