The Unified Biometric System (UBS) of Russia helped partner banks save over RUB 1bn last year by preventing fraud, Izvestiya reports.

UBS is expected to be the chief tool of fighting loan fraud. The Izvestiya article is based on the information provided by Russian banks and confirmed by the UBS operator, Rostelecom. The financial organizations clarified that they already used their own recognition systems, but those only covered internal data.


Representatives of the largest Russian banks have told Izvestiya that they consider UBS the chief tool for fighting frauds that use others’ or fake passports to access bank services.

Tinkoff Bank has reduced loan fraud by six times over the last three years thanks to the face recognition technology. The bank said it enabled them to save dozens of millions of rubles per month.

Thanks to biometrics, Pochta Bank managed to prevent around 5,000 frauds last year.

According to current legislation, UBS can be used for only three financial operations: opening accounts and deposits, taking a loan, and making money transfers. However, in the future banks will be able to decide independently in which cases they want to use UBS, so fraud prevention might make that list.

Experts say that full penetration of UBS excludes the risk of providing a loan to a fraud, but biometrics has side effects: in some cases the system did not recognize the users after they cut their hair or had a swelling on the face after a visit to the dentist. Izvestiya notes that the biometric technology keeps developing and such minor errors will be fixed.

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