Lloyds Bank the first financial services company to trial Signly – a British Sign Language (BSL) translation tool

• New technology provides innovative way of interacting with Bank literature

LONDON, 27-Jan-2017 — /EuropaWire/ — Lloyds Bank has become the first financial services company to undertake a trial with Signly – a British Sign Language (BSL) translation tool. Lloyds Banking Group’s Innovation Labs trialled the technology to understand how Signly could offer an alternative option for up to 250,000 people in the UK who use BSL each day. Since undertaking the trial, the Bank is now looking to test the technology with a wider group of customers.

BSL is a unique language with its own sentence structure and contains a number of key differences to both spoken English, and Signed Supported English (SSE). This means that for customers who use BSL as their first language, many communications are often hard to understand.

Signly enables customers to scan Signly-enabled literature on their smartphone which provides translations into BSL through augmented reality. The trial incorporated Signly’s functionality into both written and online material, enabling hard of hearing and deaf customers to use BSL to understand the financial material they were being shown.

In addition to trialling Signly functionality, Lloyds Bank currently provides a wealth of ways for customers to interact with their bank. These include Text Relay and SignVideo, a signed video service which provides deaf customers with access to an online interpreter. For those with visual impairments, customers can access large print, braille and recorded literature.

Nick Williams, Lloyds Bank’s Consumer Digital director said,

“We are always looking for new ways to support our customers and trialling this new technology is a great example. Alongside SignVideo, Text Relay and our interpreting service, Signly provides a new tool to make it easier to engage with the Bank. Improving our services to make them simple and intuitive for all our customers is key to removing barriers of financial exclusion.”

Notes to editors

• LBG Innovation Labs undertook an experiment in partnership with Signly to understand the extent to which the Signly concept acts as an enabler to better understanding information. Eight in depth interviews were run in the LBG customer lab with profoundly deaf customers, all with BSL as their first language. Participants provided feedback on some of the current barriers faced, as well as their experience of using the app throughout the session.
• More information on the Signly trial can be found in this short video.
• Lloyds Bank is looking to pilot this new technology with a larger group of customers. Subject to the results of the pilot, the Bank will then look to roll out the new technology so it is available for all customers with BSL as their first language.
• Signly was conceived and developed by Mark Applin, founder of Intermedia Solutions and Deafax, a charity committed to transforming the lives of deaf people through technology.
• The purpose of this work was to test whether the Signly App or simplified content is a viable alternative for profoundly deaf users to consume Lloyds Bank content across on both desktop and printed material.

Lloyds Banking Group

• At Lloyds Banking Group, we are building our business and our strategy with digital firmly at the centre.
• Digital is integrated into everything we do across all of the markets and channels we operate within. We have committed to invest £1 billion in our digital capability over the next three years (2015-2017) which is focused on delivering customer focused propositions, enhancing digital capabilities and delivery, and transforming our customers’ experiences, whether they are a retail, business or insurance customer.
• Being able to bank digitally is of ever increasing importance to our customers.
• Lloyds Banking Group has over 12 million active internet banking users.
• Over seven and a half million actively use mobile, making us the ‘biggest mobile bank’ in the UK.
• As part of its Helping Britain Prosper Plan, around one in every four Lloyds Banking Group colleagues will be dedicated to helping people and organisations use the internet to improve digital skills and financial capability. This substantial commitment has delivered over 20,000 Digital Champions within the Group. To help deliver this commitment Lloyds Banking Group aims to create the most digitally capable workforce in Financial Services, through the LBG Digital Academy. Additionally, to ensure this commitment has maximum impact within communities, the bank partners with the Tinder Foundation, providing the Group with access to a network of over 5,000 UK online centres

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MEDIA CONTACTS

Chris Tuttlebee: 07850 723184 christopher.tuttlebee@lloydsbanking.com Rhonda Ritchie: 07909 532865 rhonda.ritchie@lloydsbanking.com