Independent Banker - June 2018 - 52

T
oday, you've held science
fi ction in your hands,
perhaps asking Siri for
directions or Alexa for the
weather. These artifi cial
intelligence-based " chatbots "
are getting us accustomed
to voice-enabled search and
changing our expectations as consumers and
business people. Industry observers agree
that is already translating into changes to the
banking landscape.
Artifi cial intelligence (AI) is an umbrella
term covering several areas of computer science
that aim to build software that mimics human
intelligence, including how we reason, use
language and build on established knowledge to
get smarter over time.
To date, AI has been associated with
megabanks, such as Bank of America's highly
publicized " Erica " virtual assistant, which was
developed by a 100-person team. Community
banks, most of which lack the resources for
that kind of investment, have been left on
the sidelines until now. But the increasingly
mainstream development of AI technology is
pushing the cost down and opening up more
applications that are more easily deployed. AI
may now be more feasible and aff ordable than
community bankers have realized.
Putting it into practice
Suppose your bank had an Alexa-like virtual
assistant that had been taught thousands of pages
of regulations, including context for regulatory
requirements. Instead of wading through the
regulations, your compliance offi cer could say,
" Bankbot, fi nd me the most recent changes in
the BSA that aff ect this kind of transaction. " The
compliance offi cer never has to look up from
the keyboard, and the digital assistant quickly
returns with the required information. There are
probably many compliance offi cers out there who
would feel like they just met their new best friend!
Chatbots have risen to fame as a customerfacing
technology, but as this example
shows, they can also have internal
applications. These capabilities are
50 Q ICBA Independent Banker Q June 2018
available now to banks, at least
in some form, without extensive
on-board IT resources.
Abe AI, for example, which builds
conversational banking solutions,
works with your mobile or core
providers to connect your bank to Alexa, Google
Home or your choice of virtual assistant. In
this way, Siri, Alexa or other personal digital
assistants that your customers are already using
to select a dinner party playlist now become a
channel for your bank. The customer can see
their bank balance on their laptop or hear it
spoken by Alexa.
" This is banking that meets you where you
are in the moment of your life, " says Keith
Armstrong, Abe AI's chief operating offi cer.
" The bot coupled
with the AI
platform was able
to go through and
normalize that data
and do it incredibly
fast. It would take a
human months. "
-Matthew M. Speare,
Carter Bank & Trust
Virtual assistants can quickly sort through
and analyze vast amounts of data, which is the
engine driving most of AI's benefi ts. " AI can
evaluate massive amounts of information, " says
Kevin Tweddle, group executive vice president,
innovation and fi nancial technology for ICBA.
He suggests that one use of AI would be to
look at the history of a bank's loan transactions
Independent Banker - June 2018

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