The Bank of New Zealand is using face and emotion recognition to let customers know what scares them about their own financial standing. Called EmotionScan, the system was co-created by BNZ, nViso and Stuart Carr, a professor of psychology at Massey University.Reported by The Financial Brand, EmotionScan works by analyzing users’ faces as they listen to a series of scenarios related to eight different financial “areas of interest,” which include cash flow, budgeting, mortgages, retirement, financial security, financial control, debt, dependents, donations and savings. The system runs through a browser and leverages webcams in user computers.
“Our technology tracks hundreds of points on the face,” Tim Llewellynn, CEO of nViso said in the report. “We’re able to map those points to over 43 muscles, allowing us to capture micro-expressions and translate those into a set of common emotions.”