Page 33 - Banking Finance August 2022

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5) "Documents required for ----------- loan" UVA (Union bank of India's Virtual assistant) help in
redefining customer experience by (ASK UVA). The features
6) "How can I get -------- loan"
offered after "How may I help you " are-
can be asked.
1) EMI Calculator
2) Call Centre Executive
C) ICICI BANK- Bank has deployed robotics across 200
application across various function of company. The 3) Deposits
bank claimed to be 1 st among country and among a
4) Loans
few globally to deploy this technology that emulates
5) Government Schemes
human actions to automate and perform repetitive and
high volume and time consuming business task. ICICI 6) Interest Rates
launched IPAL chatbot. Since its inception till February
7) Others
2020 it has attended 3.1 million customers and their 6
million queries along with 90 percent accuracy rate.
Utility of Chatbot as a modern day

IPAL is divided into three categories- banking tool -
1) First category involves FAQ, which are simple questions As the globe continues to be impacted by the pandemic,
which you may want to ask your bank executives, for consumers are relying on technology more than ever before.
which there are simple structured answers. You ask From using various technologies like video conferencing tools
question, Bot will respond and it learns along with way. to communicate with friends and family at distant places to
completing our daily routine tasks like depositing a cheque
2) Second category, It involve financial transactions ,where
from a mobile banking app, it's safe to say that the COVID-
in you can make fund transfer from person to person,
pay your bill or recharge your bills using queries. 19 pandemic has further solidified the digital transformation
that was already underway before 2020. Numbers of
3) In third category it involves helping people discover new
customers have increased their online banking usage during
features. These answers simple how to tasks such as
COVID-19 - indicating that the pandemic further accelerated
how to reset your ATM Pin, which is a bit more evolved
the already trending adoption of digital communications
and is like interacting with your bank executive.
using chatbots in the financial industry.
The bank is currently in process of integrating ipal with
Just as digital technology is overtaking the banking industry
existing voice assistant such as Cortana, Siri and assistant.
due, in part, to consumers staying at home more often and
D) Union Virtual Assistant (UVA) - Chabot by Union Bank avoiding in-branch transactions, consumers are utilizing
of India (UVA) is an artificial intelligence (AI) software chatbots in their digital communications with their financial
that can simulate a conversation or chat with a human institutions. Understanding from an analogy presented Back
user in natural language through messaging application in 2011, Where Gartner predicted that customers would
(text chats) or voice commands or may be both, which manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise
may be through Website, Social media platform ,or without interacting with a human by the year 2020 - a
mobile apps. Techno savvy customers prefer self-service seemingly accurate forecast as the use of AI and chatbot
and they want quick and easy ways to get their queries technology has never been higher and is only expected to
responded. Chatbot conduct conversation to respond continue to surge. Today's tech savvy consumers were
queries and deliver meaningful offer and make everyday beginning to adopt the idea of using AI to communicate with
banking easier, faster and convenient. Some of the a business long before the pandemic. According to the 2018
salient features of chatbot are that they can handle Consumer Online Banking Report, 44% of those surveyed
Omni-platform concurrent queries, humanistic stated they would rather communicate with a chatbot than
approach, predictive in nature, they conduct short and a real person, assuming it could answer their questions as
simple interaction with easy text driven conversation reliably as a live agent.
and also having simple user interface. They are at
customer service 24*7*365 i.e. all the time. As financial institutions take a more urgent approach to

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