With the rising popularity of Fintech companies who are somewhat regarded as competitors to banks, the optimization of digital services in traditional banks has become inherent. Stanbic IBTC during its meet up session at the ongoing Social Media Week Lagos 2019 reiterated the need for all banking services to leverage technology to deliver optimum service to customers.
Wale Ojo, manager, process improvement, Stanbic IBTC, who spoke at the session themed; ‘Positioning the Digitization Agenda’, said that the bank has deployed artificial intelligence (AI) with the use of chatbots to improve service delivery to its customers and is also deploying internet of things (IoT) which ensures that people, process and systems are connected.
“We have developed robotic solutions that make our financial process more seamless, and this helps to reduce the number of human interactions that occur within the system.
“We have an all-in-one app that allows customers to navigate across various accounts from a single user interface. The same app could be used to access different sites instead of having different apps for different bank accounts in different bank websites,” Ojo said.
The bank has also developed chatbots that can log on to systems, using the username and password to visit different sites and download information and save such information in a particular location that could be accessible to all.
According to Ojo, the ‘SAMI’ chatbot developed by the bank can interact and help its customers perform basic transactions such as account opening, checking of account balance and other customer care related issues. The back-end robotics are used to carry out cheque confirmation, verification and clearance as fast as possible.
“They act as robot advisory that help customers to identify investment types that best suit their financial strength. The chatbots advice customers on different bank offerings based on the customer’s spending pattern. With our robotics, we are able to deal with back-end operations by speeding up our back-end operations such that customers do not experience long turn-around time and delays in the banking operations,” Ojo said.
Jane Nwosu, senior process analyst, Stanbic IBTC, spoke on the bank’s innovation lab. The lab she says was developed to properly engage customers, know exactly what they want and provide impeccable services that suit the customer’s needs.
“Our investments in robotics and people are important to us as a bank, as we will continue to invest in young people that have brilliant ideas. We will continue to invest in robots and in people to prove a point that the use of technology in banking operations will not eliminate jobs of people. It is all about workforce optimization. We see millennials taking up key banking operations in the future, and that is the reason why we invest in people even as we invest in chatbots,” Ojo said.
Jumoke Akiyode-Lawanson
