Authentication and Fraud Prevention Solutions—Omni-channel customer engagement success stories

RBS Group fights fraud and protects customers with Nuance voice biometrics

How do you protect 19 million banking customers from fraud? RBS Group uses Nuance voice biometrics technology to quickly detect fraud attempts coming into its call centre, and disrupt organised crime activities across all its customer engagement channels.

Company profile

The Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS Group) is a private banking and insurance holding company, based in Edinburgh Scotland. RBS Group operates a wide variety of banking brands offering personal and business banking, private banking, insurance, and corporate finance through its offices located in Europe, North America and Asia.

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RBS uses Nuance voice biometrics
With Nuance voice biometrics, we get a clearer view of customer and fraudster behavior, so we can keep genuine customers protected and take the fight to the criminals who are targeting their accounts.

Jason Costain
Head of Fraud Strategy and Relationship Management
RBS Group

Challenge

Like any bank, the call centre is an important customer service channel for Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS), which serves 19 million customers across 12 banking and financial services brands.

But the voice channel is also a prime target for fraudulent activity. To combat criminal behavior, RBS was looking for ways to get a clearer view of fraud indicators across all its customer engagement channels.

The bank needed to put more effective security mechanisms in place while still delivering a fast, smooth experience for genuine customers. That meant finding ways to rely less on passwords and other static identifiers that can be stolen or forgotten, and it knew that voice biometrics could be an important piece of the anti-fraud puzzle.

Solution

With Nuance Security Suite, RBS scans all inbound calls and alerts agents to potential fraud. As well as a library of ‘bad’ voices, RBS now has a whitelist of genuine customer voices that can be used for rapid authentication, without the need for customers to remember passwords and other identifying information.

The Nuance solution also enables the bank to take a holistic approach to fraud detection and prevention. By combining Nuance Security Suite data with information from other criminal activity detection tools, RBS has discovered that fraudsters on the voice channel also perpetrate a lot of fraud on digital channels. Armed with that knowledge, the bank has been able to identify and disrupt organised crime activities to protect its customers and assist law enforcement.

Results

In less than a year, RBS has screened 17 million inbound calls. Of these, 23,000 have led to alerts, and the bank has found that one in every 3,500 calls is a fraud attempt. Stopping fraudsters in their tracks is already paying off financially, as Jason Costain, the bank’s head of fraud strategy and relationship management, explains: “Although this initiative isn’t just aimed at reducing losses, we expected to save a reasonable amount of money, and we’ve already saved one and a half times that.”

“It’s not just about stopping financial loss—it’s about disrupting criminals,” says Jason. “For example, one prolific fraudster identified through Nuance Security Suite was connected to suspect logins on 1,500 bank accounts. That’s helped us protect potential fraud victims and identify the ‘mules’ being used by the crime network to perpetrate fraud, leading to two arrests so far.”

Nuance Security Suite and RBS

Hear how RBS is cutting its fraud losses, generating significant ROI, and safeguarding legitimate customers.

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