Thanks to the transformative advantages promised by generative artificial intelligence (AI), the banking and finance sector is at an inflection point. From redefining a bank’s competitive advantage in customer relationships to streamlining the core business of banking to strengthening cyber resilience, AI technologies can unlock quite a few latest opportunities.
Institutions are already seizing this chance. The IBM Institute for Business Value (IBM IBV) Global Outlook for Banking and Financial Markets 2024 found that 78% of the 600 executives surveyed are tactically using generative AI for at the very least one use case.
A well-liked entry point is generative AI assistants—and for good reason. After the COVID-19 pandemic drove adoption of virtual agent technology through the roof, firms are actually discovering how incorporating generative AI into the combination will pay off. Forward-thinking firms can remove friction from the shopper self-service experience on any device or channel, increase worker productivity, and enable widespread adoption.
The IBM Partner Ecosystem helps banks and financial institutions realize their generative AI dreams using IBM watsonx™ Assistant, a next-generation conversational AI solution. Click here to explore the use cases and advantages by industry.
Automating customer support for optimum efficiency
Insurance will be complicated, and naturally customers want things to be so simple as possible when coping with providers. Generali Poland, a provider of comprehensive insurance services, found that its customer support representatives spent most of their time answering basic questions over and all over again and coping with straightforward claims and policy changes.
The insurer cooperates with IBM Business Partner® WAIT to revamp its customer support experience. Within a month, Generali Poland introduced Leon, a virtual assistant that Actionbot by TUATARA, based on IBM Watsonx Assistant.
Leon now handles greater than 97% of customer calls without the necessity to transfer them to human agents. As a result, Generali Poland saves around 120 working hours per thirty days and has reduced customer advisors' working time by one hour per day. Within a month of going live, the corporate recorded 2.5 times more customer interactions with the chatbot than with the previous human advisors.
Expanding technological leadership
TUATARA also helped leading cooperative bank BS Brodnica further challenge the established order in customer support. The company, which was one in all the primary cooperative banks in Poland to supply digital banking services, wanted to make use of AI automation to supply its customers with access to fast, high-quality support.
As a result, Piotr was born. Also based on Actionbot Piotr, a virtual assistant powered by TUATARA and IBM Watsonx Assistant, is fully integrated with the bank's knowledge base. Piotr was up and running inside three months and took part in 1,000 conversations inside two months. So far, the virtual assistant has achieved a 90% accuracy rate in answering support requests; a number that is predicted to extend due to built-in learning capabilities.
Grzegorz Głowacki, Member of the Board for IT and Innovation at BS Brodnica, summarizes: “Through our work with IBM and TUATARA, BS Brodnica increases customer satisfaction, sharpens its competitive advantage and strengthens its position as probably the most revolutionary cooperative bank in Poland.”
Connecting the dots
Entrepreneurial fintech innovators are recognizing the potential of generative AI to create attractive latest service offerings for his or her customers. One example is Asteria, an IBM Business Partner based in Stockholm, Sweden. Together with IBM Client Engineering, they’ve developed Asteria Smart Finance Advisor, a brand new virtual assistant based on IBM watsonx Assistant, IBM Watson® Discovery and IBM® watsonx.ai™ AI Studio.
Asteria Smart Finance Advisor gives Asteria's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) fast insight into the financial health of their businesses. The virtual advisor may also answer financial questions and advise them on which products are most relevant to their specific business and financial situation.
An inspiring example of how an IBM Business Partner is using IBM technologies to deliver tangible advantages to its clients is Asteria. In a pilot project, the corporate found that it could reduce the time spent advising on loan applications by 33% using IBM watsonx™.
This pilot was only the start. Asteria plans to assist its SME clients improve their profitability, increase their financial stability and sharpen their financial acumen through the more comprehensive implementation of its virtual advisor.
Bringing customer data to life
Generative AI can also be proving invaluable in understanding customer behavior. artifactan IBM Business Partner headquartered in Paris with 1,500 employees worldwide, used IBM watsonx.ai AI Studio to assist a serious French bank gain insights into consumer habits.
A bank worker who wants to know how a certain style of customer might reply to a proposed offer first creates a goal persona, corresponding to a 20-30 yr old skilled living in a big city. The Artefact solution uses the goal persona to model a virtual “cluster” of shoppers, with each cluster representing 2 to three million real customers. The worker can then interact conversationally with customer avatars generated by IBM watsonx.ai AI Studio, asking them about their personal preferences and consumption habits.
A small Artefact team used IBM watsonx.ai AI Studio to deploy the whole solution from backend to frontend in only one month. Based on the success of this primary use case, Artefact is now working on a second generative AI project for the bank that routinely generates targeted emails to customers.
The next step
This IBM IBV CEO Study 2024 found that product and repair innovation will likely be CEOs' top priority over the following three years, with generative AI opening the door to a brand new universe of possibilities.
Generative AI assistants are a great entry point for organizations within the finance and banking sector trying to gain a foothold on this exciting latest world. With the assistance of the IBM Partner Ecosystem, these institutions can effortlessly construct assistants that delight customers while increasing profits.
If your organization is able to explore the capabilities of IBM Watsonx Assistant and related technologies, try Watsonx Assistant free of charge or integrate Watsonx into your solutions.
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