Page 37 - Banking Finance September 2021

ARTICLE

as a tool for better monitoring of transactions by company's channels, e.g. the bank's website, app, Google Assistant and
management. Special reports can be generated based on Alexa. Eva similar to so many other chatbots follows the
customers' general payment pattern, which will highlight industry norm in being female - can handle 7,500 FAQs and
unusual transactions in terms of amount, beneficiary, has till date had more than 16 million conversations. She
payment schedule etc. These reports can be used by Top has been integrated with online travel aggregators and
Management of the company to take informed decision. service providers, so she can book bus tickets or chart out
trips for customers.
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) has been gathering
momentum in the Banking sector. Even in 2010, Spanish Kotak Mahindra Bank's "Keya" can talk in both English and
Banking group Santander had introduced autonomous Hindi. It can recognise customer intent in 75% of cases and
robots for customer assistance. Another recent example is can independently conclude over 11% of all calls serviced
UAE-based Emirates NBD, which announced AI robots to by the voicebot without any human intervention.
interact with customers.
Globally, banking industry is the biggest consumer of
In one of the leading banks, cheque authentication today is technology and among the fastest adopters of new
mostly done not by a human teller, but by an artificial technology. Indian banks are no exception. For them, AI is
intelligence (AI) system. It has multiple advantages. When both about scale (for a large number of retail customers
someone tries to forge a signature, there are minute needing a common solution) and about customisation (for
fissures, blots or anomalies that may not be visible to the corporate customers having specific requirements). AI is
human eye but will become glaringly obvious to a trained being employed across divisions - in reconciliation (ATM
bot (software robot). And if the account holder signs in hurry reconciliation where balances are settled between different
and it's not quite the same as in the bank's system, the bot banks and their ATM networks when one bank customer
understands it's actually a genuine signature. Only in uses another bank's ATM), in treasury (to predict the possible
instances wherever old age or disability has altered a direction of India's bond market based on historical data),
person's signature significantly does the bot pass on the in fund management (for more data driven, parameters-set
query to others. trading for wealth management clients), in fraud
management (to prevent identity theft, money laundering
These days, Indian banks are prominently deploying the using deposits or loan fraud) and in regulatory compliance
chatbots. SBI has also deployed SIA (SBI Intelligent (to assist bank employees, who may not know the entire
Assistant), artificial intelligence-powered software that has labyrinth of rules and regulations the RBI has for banks).
the capability to respond to 850 million queries a day, making
it the largest-financial sector AI solution in the world. SIA is In recent times, there has been a lot of buzz on deploying
a multilingual chatbot which can respond in 14 languages artificial intelligence-based software or a virtual workforce
in speech or text. It will enhance the level of customer to bring efficiency in operations while reducing operations
service by several notches.

ICICI Bank's AI-powered virtual personal assistant iPal, today
addresses over 1.5 million queries a month. The bot answers
questions, can also pay bills, do fund transfers or recharge
your mobile on your behalf. The bot can also handle complex
queries on GST, government digital initiatives, service
requests, ATM locations, branch details and IFSC codes.

Bots are also programmed to adjust for human error. Like
for a person wanting to 'recharge', the bot will even accept
text variations like 'recharg', 'rchrg', 'recharge', 'refill', 'add
balance', 'load mobile', and 'top up'. HDFC Bank's e-virtual
assistant "Eva" has been programmed to figure with multiple

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