Data security top Pinoy concern when dealing with banks, says Unisys study

MANILA, Philippines – Philippine bank customers ranked data security as the issue that matters to them most when choosing their financial institution, according to new research from international IT firm Unisys.

More importantly — of the five Asia-Pacific countries included in the survey, including Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Taiwan — Filipinos had the highest level of trust in banks to protect customer data.

According to the Unisys study, 42 percent of Filipinos cited banks as the organization they trusted most to share their personal data with. This was twice the number of people who trust the government (21 percent) or card networks (15 percent) with the same information.

“Philippine banks currently enjoy a high level of trust from their customers based on their ability to protect the sensitive personal data in their care,” Unisys Asia-Pacific financial services industry director Ian Selbie said.

The results were published on Wednesday in the company’s 2019 Asia-Pacific Banking Insights: Trusting in the Banking Experience study of the attitudes of banking customers in the region.

“As open banking is rolled out across Asia, allowing banks to more easily work with third parties to provide new services to customers, they will need to demonstrate that they are protecting their customer data across all parties involved in the banking service supply chain,” he explained. “Our research also reveals that trust in banks is lower for those aged 18-34 years, flagging that banks will need to actively work to maintain their customer base’ trust over time.”

Filipinos cited focusing on the security and safety of customer data as the most important issue for them when engaging with a bank (63 percent of respondents). In comparison, slightly more than half (54 percent) of Filipinos ranked efficient service and issue resolution as the priority, and one-third (36 percent) cited ease of use and transparency of services as important to them.

Filipinos also recorded the highest level of comfort in using biometrics to verify their identity to authorize financial transactions, compared to the other five countries surveyed.

Eight in ten Filipinos were comfortable using voice, face or fingerprint methods to access mobile banking apps (85 percent), or use facial or fingerprint recognition at an ATM (81 percent). Slightly less (64 percent) were comfortable using voice recognition when calling the banks’ call centers.

But just over half (53 percent) were comfortable with banks using behavioral biometrics, such as tracking the unique way a person scrolls through websites, types on the phone or presses buttons, to verify identity. Filipinos who were not in favor of biometric methods mostly cited data security concerns.

Filipinos ranked long queues as their top complaint about their bank, unchanged over the last three years with almost half (49 percent) annoyed by this issue. Those aged 18-34 years are less concerned about queues than older Filipinos, but they are more concerned about their credit card being frozen due to suspected fraudulent transactions.