Standard Chartered HK to harness AI capabilities via conversational chatbot

Standard Chartered Hong Kong has become the latest bank to turn to artificial intelligence (AI) for customer-facing tasks. According to a report in the South China Morning Post, an AI chatbot is about to be rolled out by the bank.

The chatbot, based on Kasisto’s Kai Banking platform, can answer customers’ questions via the bank’s mobile app or its website. The new solution is set to allow retail customers to get account information, make payments, transfer money, track expenses and analyze their spending.

“The bot has the know-how to fulfill client requests, make actionable recommendations and solve problems – while providing banking services with a human touch. It can handle all of the unique ways people communicate and when there is a need to talk to a human, the bot can seamlessly hand-off to a live agent,” said Zor Gorelov, chief executive and co-founder of Kasisto.

The chatbot is set to handle 82% of customer inquiries and requests without any need for any human intervention. The service will be rolled out in phases, with the first phase scheduled for the the second quarter of 2018.

The deployment of chatbots for consumer-facing tasks has been a growing trend among financial services companies lately. In September this year, Nordea Bank presented a customer service chatbot in Norway and said there was a very positive reaction by customers to it. The service has been accessed more than 7,000 times and answered over 10,000 questions from both personal and corporate customers.

In October this year, Swissquote unveiled the launch of its own chatbot on mobile applications. Nordnet has hired its first digital employee – Amelia, who is supporting new customers through the onboarding process and helping them with tasks such as account activation. One of the advantages of Amelia is that she is available 24 hours a day, so that customers will be able to make use of the bank’s services whenever they see fit.