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* Barclays is first bank to use finger scanner for bigaccounts
* Expects strong take-up from its 30,000 large corporateclients
* Will also roll out voice recognition for retail clients
By Steve Slater and Matt Scuffham
LONDON, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Barclays is launching afinger scanner for corporate clients and will roll out voicerecognition for millions of retail clients next year as it stepsup use of biometric recognition technology to combat bankingfraud.
The British bank said it has teamed up with Japanesetechnology firm Hitachi to develop a biometric readerthat scans a finger and identifies unique vein patterns toaccess accounts, instead of using a password or PIN.
Vein recognition technology is used by some banks in Japanand elsewhere at ATM machines, but Barclays said it is the firstbank globally to use it for significant account transactions.
Barclays said it is the start of a ramp up in its use ofbiometrics to provide safer verification systems that cut fraudrisks from customers sharing or choosing obvious passwords, orforgetting PINs.
"Biometrics is the way to go in the future. We have no doubtabout that, we are committed to it," said Ashok Vaswani, chiefexecutive of Barclays personal and corporate banking.
Vaswani said Barclays was improving technology and security,but criminals were also getting more sophisticated.
"You can't let these guys create a breach in the dam. You'vegot to constantly stay ahead of the game," he told Reuters.
Britain's private companies lost 21 billion pounds ($34.5billion) from fraud in 2012 and financial firms suffered 5.4billion pounds of that, according to National Fraud Authorityestimates.
SOPHISTICATED HACKERS
Banks are coming under particular scrutiny amid evidence ofincreasing attacks from sophisticated hackers.
Wall Street bank JP Morgan last month said it wasworking with U.S. law enforcement authorities to investigate apossible cyber attack, after the FBI said it was looking intoreports on a spate of attacks on U.S. banks.
Royal Bank of Scotland and other UK banks havesuffered serious attacks by hackers in the last two years andare trying to strengthen their defences from coordinated attacksand other more routine fraud.
Barclays said its vein authentication technology will berolled out to corporate customers next year and it expectsstrong take-up from its 30,000 large corporate clients.
The finger scanner, which looks like a mini Star WarsStormtrooper helmet, sits on the customer's desk and plugs intoa computer. The vein pattern is matched with one stored on a SIMcard, so Barclays does not hold a record. The scanned finger hasto be attached to a live human body to work.
The bank launched voice recognition biometrics for privatebanking clients last year and Vaswani said rolling that out morewidely to retail clients "will definitely happen in 2015" andthe bank was exploring other opportunities.
That could include using similar technology on mobiletablets, which is the fastest growing area for European banks,or at ATMs.($1 = 0.6081 British Pounds) (Editing by Susan Thomas)
