Coming soon to a credit union near you, Illuma Labs’ fintech offers real-time voice authentication powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning.

INVENTION
Voice Authenticator
Milind Borkar

“Gone are the days of long question-and-answer sessions to prove your identity every time you call your financial institution. Our innovative approach helps our clients enhance the user experience they offer to their end customers, while simultaneously elevating security and improving operational efficiency,” Miland Borkar says.

Founded in 2016 by Illuman Labs CEO Borkar and Chief Technology Officer Jeremy Whittington, Plano-based Illuma Labs developed its Illuma Shield platform with $2 million in R&D contracts from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. As COVID-19 increased the volume of calls to customer service centers for financial institutions, Illuma Shield helped credit unions using the platform to reduce call duration and hold times, Borkar says.

In May, Illuma Labs received an undisclosed amount of seed funding based on its participation in VentureTech for the best new fintech applications.

Meet the innovator

Milind Borkar was featured in Dallas Innovates’ Future 50 in Dallas-Fort Worth in the 2021 edition of our annual magazine. We talk with Borkar about recent developments at Illuma Labs, the impact of the pandemic on their work with financial institutions, and teamwork in difficult times. Here’s a takeaway:

On 2020 innovations:

We have focused our innovations on offering simple and cost-effective voice authentication solutions to our clients. Our flagship product, Illuma Shield, was developed with $2M in R&D contracts with the US Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate. Today this platform enables passive voice authentication for contact center applications. Gone are the days of long question and answer sessions to prove your identity every time you call your financial institution. Our innovative approach helps our clients enhance the user experience they offer to their end customers, while simultaneously elevating security and improving operational efficiency.

Voice authentication in contact centers is just the beginning for us. We are excited about the continued growth of voice as a primary human-machine interface. Siri and Alexa have made it popular as a natural and convenient way to interact with our everyday devices. We believe the future will bring voice interfaces to more and more of our everyday devices. We are looking forward to that future and to making these devices secure and convenient with our technologies.

On the impact of COVID-19:

COVID-19 related lockdowns forced most of our clients to close their brick-and-mortar branches, which resulted in 50 percent to 200 percent increases in inbound phone calls to their contact centers. Contact center operations were unable to keep up, resulting in extended hold times and frustrated end customers. Passive voice authentication with Illuma Shield enables our clients to cut minutes from call durations and hold times while enabling a pleasant user experience for both the end customer as well as contact center staff.

On building a resilient team:

We are fortunate to have an exceptionally talented and hardworking team that has increased overall productivity over the past months. Our leadership has been transparent about the critical problems our clients are facing and have empowered our team to come up with innovative solutions to help our clients during these challenging times. This has helped maintain a team attitude, bolster confidence, and foster resilience.

On what’s next for Illuma Labs:

We are gaining a lot of traction in the Credit Union industry, so the next time you call your friendly neighborhood credit union it is likely Illuma Shield is helping make your experience convenient, efficient and secure.

A version of this story was originally published in Dallas Innovates 2021: The Resilience Issue.

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Our fourth annual magazine, Dallas Innovates 2021: The Resilience Issue, highlights Dallas-Fort Worth as a hub for innovation. The collective strength of the innovation ecosystem and intellectual capital in Dallas-Fort Worth is a force to be reckoned with.

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