Georgina Bulkeley, NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland’s director of strategy and innovation
In hindsight, it was probably fitting that my conversation with Georgina Bulkeley took place over the phone.
It wasn’t meant to, but a face-to-face interview in NatWest’s London offices was scrapped at the last minute after a virus infection. (No, not that one.)
But seeing as Bulkeley, NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland’s director of strategy and innovation, is in charge of its push into voice banking, it was probably the most appropriate means of conversation.
Georgina has been with the bank since 2007, just before the financial crisis griped the world and has worked her way up the ranks.
Since then, the banking landscape has changed drastically – for example, contactless payments have rockets and branches have shuttered.
Georgina has been the driver behind NatWest looking ahead, launching bank cards which let you users with their fingerprint and a move into letting customers bank with their voice.
Our voice-to-voice interview had already been rescheduled once, thanks to the first attempt clashing with a business trip to Singapore.
I ask about it mainly out of courtesy, but it proved a useful segue into what I was planning on talking about anyway.
She says she learned plenty from the other banks there, namely Brazilian colossus Bradesco.
In South America, voice banking is far more widespread in banking than in Britain, with Bradesco in particular one of its biggest adopters.
‘It’s so important to look out a lot’, she says, ‘what do our customers want and what are other people doing?’
Did customers want smart speaker banking?
NatWest has banked on biometrics and voice banking in particular, more than most of its rivals, having launched a three month trial with Google’s smart speakers involving 500 customers last August. Did its customers want it?
‘What we learned was people were happy to check their balances and move money between accounts’, Bulkeley says, ‘but they’re probably not ready to set up a mortgage or pension that way.’
The best response to the trial came from those who were either physically disabled or visually impaired. ‘They said, “this is incredible”. It’s a cohort I think of a lot’.
She echoes a point often made by advocates of replacing passwords with facial, fingerprint or voice identification.
While most attempted innovations in banking are usually aimed at younger customers, biometrics instead are aimed at those who may struggle to read or remember passwords.
Biometrics has its supporters, but there is also evidence of resistance.
NatWest’s biggest push into voice banking was a 500 customer trial involving Google’s smart speakers, which would allow them to carry out various banking tasks
Some 53 per cent of people said they don’t find the idea of logging into banking using their voice or fingerprint appealing, with three in five of those saying it doesn’t feel right, according to a survey of 2,500 people by Worldpay.
Meanwhile, more than half didn’t think biometrics were actually more secure than the passwords they are supposed to replace, a rather large stumbling block if you’re trying to convince customers to commit to using their voice to do most of their banking.
Winning over reluctants: a matter of trust?
How, I ask, do NatWest plan to win over such reluctant users?
‘The core component is trust, people assume retail banking is easy but actually it’s really hard.
‘We do a huge amount of testing and we’re actively listening to our customers, but I think it is challenging to get the root of that (reluctance)’.
She points to the example of another trial. NatWest has its fingers quite literally in a lot of pies when it comes to biometrics, with it trialling credit and debit cards which replace having to enter a pin with a fingerprint scanner to authorise payments.
She said: ‘One of the big questions about the card was about data storage, people were asking if there is a big data centre with copies of everyone’s fingerprints in it.’
The core component is trust, people assume retail banking is easy but actually it’s really hard.
Those in the trial, she tells me, seemed to relax a bit more when they heard their fingerprints were only stored on the card itself.
That, and they also liked that it lit up green when your fingerprint authorised a payment.
I mention the fact that when we tested the card as part of the trial, the green light wasn’t always forthcoming.
Have those issues been sorted out? She suggests those problems weren’t necessarily all the bank’s fault.
The smart speaker trial also took a long time to get set up. ‘It was very important to get the authentication right’, she says. ‘Pilots are hard.’
But, she insists, ‘people like being part of something new and exciting.’
NatWest trialled a biometric bank card which used a fingerprint scanner rather than a pin code to verify transactions
Why has NatWest banked on the biometric route?
Given that Bulkeley’s jobs at NatWest over the last few years before her current role are littered with words like ‘compliance’, ‘risk’ and ‘regulation’, it’s perhaps not surprising she talks a lot about ensuring customers have their fears about security assuaged.
This is important if you’re trying to encourage people to entrust their banking to speakers operated by a company which does not have the greatest reputation when it comes to privacy.
But while that focuses on the administrative aspect of ensuring everything works properly, I’m just as keen to find out why NatWest bothered going down this route in the first place.
Most banks have given people the option of using their voice as their password for telephone banking, but no one else is yet offering to swap out card pins for fingerprint scanners.
‘Innovation is more important than ever’, she says.
‘Companies need smart solutions to everyday issues.
‘The job of innovation is not just to meet people’s needs but to anticipate them. It’s important to look ahead as to how people are living their lives, and hold their hands along the way.’
She is, however, under no illusions that it might take time before people become completely comfortable with paying with their fingerprint or banking on their smart speaker, and compares it to the use of contactless, which took a while to take off.
But ‘if customers are living that way’, she says, ‘it’s our responsibility to join them’.
What other innovations could we see in banking?
Aside from her current focus on voice banking, what other developments in banking technology could she see entering our lives?
There’s a lot of talk at the moment about 5G and the opportunities that could create for joining up the appliances in our homes, while smart doorbells, thermostats and other gadgets are also all the rage.
NatWest launched its £100m challenger bank Bó before Christmas. Last week it emerged it would have to reissue 6,000 debit cards which didn’t comply with new EU payment rules
She thinks wearable devices, starting with fingerprint payment fobs – something NatWest is also trialling at the moment – could be next, followed eventually by watches and even smart home banking hubs, while the bank is also experimenting with artificial intelligence chatbots.
But although none of this likely comes cheap, it’d be fair to say NatWest’s most expensive attempt at innovation so far is the £100million attempt to build its own challenger bank, Bó, though that hasn’t gone without problems.
And given the departure of its current chief executive Mark Bailie will reportedly be announced as part of RBS boss Alison Rose’s long-term strategy this week, could the bank’s current director of innovation be in line for the job?
Bulkeley laughs at the question. ‘I probably shouldn’t comment on that’, she says, but insists she’s happy where she is.
‘I love my job, and get to do the most amazing work’.
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