Chat bots to voice-based fund transfer, digital wave sweeping Indian banks

Indian banks are also aggressively pursuing to tap the new generation customers who are tech savvy but weigh customer experience above anything else

When Arundhati Bhattacharya joined the State Bank of India (SBI) as a probationary officer in 1977, every banking operation used to be manual. There used to be "big fat" registers, she recalls, and carrying them around or even finding a past transaction in them was a herculean task.  

That was then. Today, the public sector bank can approve or decline a large project loan with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics. In the age of instant gratification, its 'INTOUCH' branches enable a customer to open an account, receive instant activation along with the issuance of a personalised debit card in less than 10 minutes. "It's been a long journey. We have crossed miles on the technology front," says Bhattacharya, former chairperson of SBI. 

SBI’s journey is really representative of the journey of the Indian banking system. They all started as massively people-driven entities, but are now being transformed into digital banks. Today, traditional banking operations such as updating  of passbooks, cash deposits, verification of know-your-customer (KYC) details and salary uploads have all gone digital. A customer does not have to visit a bank branch anymore. Mobile banking has brought banking to people’s fingertips.

On offer are chatbots and voice-based funds transfer facilities with the help of AI-enabled Amazon Alexa. SBI's AI-powered chat assistant 'SIA' addresses customer enquiries instantly and also assists in everyday banking tasks. 

HDFC Bank too has developed an AI-based chatbot called 'EVA', which answers customer queries in less than 0.4 seconds. "Post its launch last year, EVA has handled more than 8 million queries. We also have a chatbot on Facebook which enables customers to carry out transactions like ‘order a cab’ and ‘pay utilities’ among others," says Nitin Chug, Country Head- Digital Banking, HDFC Bank. 

ICICI Bank has a chatbot named 'iPal'. And in April this year, Kotak Mahindra Bank introduced the first AI-powered voice bot, ‘Keya', on its phone banking helpline.

Taking these capabilities a step further, last week IndusInd Bank came up with the AI-based ‘IndusAssist', which allows a customer to do fund transfers on Amazon Echo and other Alexa-enabled devices through voice command. The transaction gets processed through natural language processing and AI-enabled bots and executed after an OTP (one time password) authentication. "Any financial and non-financial transaction can be done through IndusAssist," says Ritesh Raj Saxena, EVP & Head – Savings, Digital & Payments Business at IndusInd Bank. “We are also the first in the industry to introduce fingerprint-based mobile banking,” he adds.

Banks are also aggressively tapping the new generation of customers who are not only tech-savvy, but put customer experience above all else. This has led to many banks introducing specialised digital branches with a bouquet of facilities. SBI's 'INTOUCH' branches are designed to cater to this growing consumer group. 

"We called it INTOUCH because its services are available on touch screens. Many of these branches are situated in malls so youngsters are able to access them more,” says Bhattacharya who had introduced this concept during her tenure. A customer can get instant loan approvals and assistance in choosing investment portfolios, and can even speak to remote experts through video conferencing in case of any query.

Canara Bank’s digital banking initiative, ‘CANDI', is also mostly targeted at generation-next. Apart from on tab banking, AI-enabled services like instant loan approval and video banking facilities, the Bengaluru-based bank has got two robots - Mitra and Candi - to help with customer service. "Last month alone, we have sanctioned 57 car loans from this CANDI branch, the highest for any of our branches across the country," says Justine J Mathew, Manager, Canara Bank CANDI branch, Bengaluru.    

To make consumer banking seamless and with less human interface, many banks have launched apps. SBI’s mobile banking app, ‘YONO’, offers customised products and services from 85 e-commerce players. 'YONO', which stands for 'You Only Need One', has crossed the 10 million downloads mark on Google Play Store and App store within 10 months of its launch.

Back-end operations

Apart from enhancing the consumer experience, technologies like AI, machine learning, natural language processing, data analytics are also making back-end operations more efficient. Many banks have implemented AI-enabled robotic process automation (RPA) across various functions such as account maintenance and servicing, loan disbursements, and even ATM support. If there is a fraudulent transaction, AI will likely sniff it out. For example, if an account sees transaction from overseas even though the account holder is in India, the system raises an alert about a possible phishing attack. “Also, if an account suddenly witnesses a series of high-value transactions, which is unusual going by the track record of the account holder, these get filtered out and analysed to check for possibilities of money laundering. And these are done real time,” says Saxena of IndusInd Bank.

Similarly, when it comes to the approval of loans, banks are using credit analytics to judge the credit-worthiness of a customer. Predictive analytics is also being employed in the case of loans for large projects. For example, SBI, in partnership with IT services firm Mphasis and ratings agency Crisil, collect structured and unstructured data about an entity seeking large loans and draw conclusions about its credit-worthiness. 

That's not all. Many private and large public sector banks have come up with dashboards through which they can gauge the financial patterns of a particular sector or a geography. SBI has built dashboards which allow its top executives to see s the deposit or advances or NPAs (Non-performing assets) at even branch levels.

Marketing guru David Ogilvy once said: “The customer is not a moron. She is your wife.” The Indian banking system seems to be acting on that bit of wisdom by adopting the latest technologies to woo customers.