Fighting AI with AI: How Can Banks Outsmart the Rise of Voice Fraud in the Contact Center?
By: Chris Adomaitis, Global Director, Solution Consulting at Omilia
AI has become a double-edged sword for the financial services industry. It brings remarkable opportunities for efficiency, automation, and customer engagement, but it also introduces a serious new risk: AI-generated voice impersonations. These artificial voices can imitate real people with striking accuracy, making them one of the most dangerous tools for fraudsters.
With voice phishing (vishing) attacks rising by 442% from the first six months of 2024 to the latter half, there’s clear evidence this type of fraud is growing exponentially. In fact, The World Economic Forum reported that financial losses exceeded $200 million in just the first quarter of 2025. As AI tools become more accessible, financial institutions must learn to anticipate and expect that every customer interaction is an entry point for a potential attack, making investment in voice verification and fraud detection solutions especially crucial.
A Rising Challenge for Financial Institutions
Banks, fintechs, and other financial organizations are prime targets for this evolving form of cybercrime. Deepfakes in this sector now account for 6.5% of all fraud attempts, representing a more than twenty-fold (2,137%) surge in just three years. Because financial institutions manage vast amounts of personal data and are in constant contact with customers, they offer the prime environment for bad actors seeking to deceive employees or customers into revealing confidential information. These incidents are becoming progressively easier for attackers to pull off. As little as 20 to 30 seconds of recorded speech is now enough to clone a person’s voice. The impact of these scams goes beyond just financial loss. They have lasting effects that can harm customer trust, damage brand reputation, and affect the long-term integrity of financial operations.
Building Multi-Layered Defenses
Protecting contact centers against AI-generated voice fraud requires a proactive, multi-layered defense strategy. Today, financial organizations need to combine human expertise with fraud prevention tools such as real-time voice verification, liveness checks, and caller ID spoofing analysis. Systems must have the ability to detect sudden changes in speaker identity, flag high-risk calls, and block known fraudsters. 76% of banks said direct contact with customers by trained staff was one of the most effective ways to prevent fraud, so it is critical that employees are armed with that same AI technology and supported in real-time to recognize red flags and act quickly to provide the best line of defense.
How Voice Biometrics Reinforce Trust
Voice authentication is one of the most reliable and frictionless ways to confirm callers' identities. When a customer calls, their voice is analyzed in real-time and compared to a secure voiceprint stored in the organization’s system. This biometric signature, created from unique vocal traits like tone and rhythm, verifies identity quickly and accurately, without needing multiple security questions.
But voice authentication alone is not sufficient. It needs to be combined with other anti-fraud measures.
AI-Driven Behavioral Analytics
Advanced behavioral analytics can spot subtle irregularities in call center interactions, flag unusual changes in how users typically interact and help identify patterns that suggest fraud long before a human agent would notice. These systems continuously monitor and learn from new data, improving their ability to detect emerging threats. Some systems can even recognize when a fraudster takes over a call after the legitimate user has logged in and automatically escalates the case to a fraud investigation team.
The Enduring Role of Human Agents
Despite these tighter technological safeguards, human oversight is still critical. AI is great at spotting patterns and automating tasks, but humans still provide oversight and judgment, capabilities needed especially in case of hacked accounts. When fraud occurs, customers require skilled professionals to handle complex or sensitive situations. By having AI surface threats, financial institutions can free their human agents to focus on the important fraud escalations that need intuition and personalized support. Human oversight provides an additional safeguard of reliability and adaptability when unprecedented challenges arise.
Looking Ahead: A Safer, Smarter Future
When we look purely at monetary figures, companies that integrate AI and automation into their security measures will end up saving millions compared to those that rely on outdated methods. As the line between real and artificial communication continues to blur, voice authentication and AI-driven anti-fraud solutions are already taking hold as standard tools in financial services. AI systems have also moved beyond just defending against fraud and are now actively empowering customer-facing teams to provide personalized, trustworthy, and emotionally intelligent service. Taken together, this evolution points to a financial industry that is safer, more secure, and highly engaged in every step of the interaction.