AI to make up to 70% of credit-related decisions concerning legal entities, Sberbank forecasts

Sberbank Rossii PAO (MCX:SBER) is known for its efforts for adopting artificial intelligence solutions. Today, the bank’s top management made comments that underlined the growing role AI will play in the future operations of the company.

Herman Gref – CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank, was quoted today by information agency Interfax as saying that AI currently accounts for 35% of the decisions related to credits for legal entities. This proportion is set to rise to 70%, Mr Gref has forecast.

He mentioned five key areas of the bank’s operations for the implementation of AI. The first and major area is robo-advising, Mr Gref said. The others are big data analysis, cybersecurity, client profile analysis, and automatization of bank operations.

This flair for AI is not the best piece of news for the bank human staff, however.

Early in 2017, the bank announced that it will deploy robot lawyer, capable of replacing 3,000 employees in its compliance department. In June this year, Mr Gref unveiled further plans for workforce reduction. The number of employees in back office roles at the bank will be reduced 12 times by 2021, according to Mr Gref. Currently, the bank has 12,000 back office employees, with the number to be reduced to 5,000 by 2018 and to 1,000 by 2021.

Sberbank is one of the founders of the recently launched SBT Venture Fund II. The main task of SBT Venture Fund II is to invest in technology companies. It aims to assist such companies in the development of their services in the Russian market, as well as in finding the right experts. The fund will focus its investments on projects related to artificial intelligence, Internet of things, cloud technologies, marketplaces, financial technologies, as well as blockchain.

The current plans envisage SBT Venture Fund II to support 15-20 companies over the next four years. The fund will pump up to $5-10 million into each project.