Clients of RBC Royal Bank are now able to take advantage of leading edge technology that retrieves cancelled cheques in seconds rather than days, and will soon be the first in Canada to identify themselves entirely through their own voices, when banking by telephone.

These are two of several initiatives unveiled by RBC executives during a presentation in Toronto for analysts and institutional investors focusing on Canadian personal and commercial banking operations.

“Digital imaging and interactive voice response will help us make banking more convenient and less complicated for everyone,” said Jim Rager, vice chairman, RBC Financial Group, in a statement.

Digital imaging involves taking a picture of virtually every cheque and deposit that goes through clients’ accounts, which are then stored in a digital archive. Images can be retrieved in seconds from the digital archive, significantly reducing the length of time currently required to trace cheques using microfilm.

“With over 1.2 million requests a year, the process of tracing cheques has long been a source of frustration for clients and employees alike, as it often required days and in some cases weeks,” said Rod Pennycook, executive VP, RBC Banking. “Digital imaging will allow us to give our clients an immediate response to their enquiries, either in the branch or by telephone.”

The digital imaging capability is currently being used within RBC Royal Bank’s operations and telephone banking centers, and will be expanded to branch banking employees across Canada before the end of this year. The bank plans to make the technology available to its online banking clients in the spring of 2004, which will allow clients to conveniently view imaged items online.

RBC clients will also soon find it easier and quicker to do their banking by telephone following the introduction of a new feature offered by RBC Royal Bank. My Voice uses natural language speech recognition to identify clients and receive instructions and eliminates button pressing.

The feature, which will be available in January 2004, is the latest step in RBC Royal Bank’s personalized telephone-banking service, and is being implemented in two phases. In the first phase, clients will be able to “enroll” their voiceprints, and once enrolled, they will be able to use their voices — rather than keying in passcodes — to identify themselves before doing their touch-tone banking.

In the second phase, slated for early August 2004, clients will be able to do all their banking by simply saying what they want to do, whether it’s paying bills, transferring funds, buying a GIC or getting a loan. The touch-tone feature will continue to run in parallel with My Voice.


http://www.newswire.ca/releases/October2003/24/c4373.html