Robot to Assist Bank Customers

Lakshmi, the Banking Robot, may replace traditional ‘May I Help You Desk’ in Indian Banks. City Union Bank by installing a robot, Lakshmi, a humanoid, at its T. Nagar, Chennai branch in the lobby to greet its customers and explain bank’s products and technology services has become the first private sector bank in the country to deploy a robot with Artificial Intelligence to answer generic banking related questions of customers. This robot later on may be integrated with Core Banking System to enable it to do multi tasking such as providing account details and ordering cheque books and to improve the automation processes. The robot, imported from France, has been customized in Coimbatore to provide basic information about bank’s history, deposit and lending rates, special schemes for students and number of branches among other things. Initially, Lakshmi will provide answers in English, followed by regional languages in the coming months. City Union Bank has fed inputs related to most of the repetitive questions being asked by customers and Lakshmi will be able to answer them.

HDFC Bank began its Artificial Intelligence (AI) project last year and will be using robots, humanoid, at its branches, to assist customers. As HDFC Bank’s majority of customers have moved to digital banking, it is now focusing on a second leg of the digital process and forayed into the use of chatbots, computer programs powered by AI that can imitate conversations like a human, for help with transactions such a recharge, bill payment etc.  Chatbots don’t just listen; they understand each user’s persona and offer tailor-made recommendations and banking services. The bank is inviting ideas from start-ups as it looks at the internet of Things, Virtual reality, AI, blockchain and rural fintech.

ICICI Bank has also been using Al to perform tasks such as generating customer IDs, updating addresses and mobile numbers and resolving ATM related queries. Similarly, Axis Bank and Yes Bank have also been experimenting with blockchain, document management, Know Your Customer (KYC) and transaction processing by using Artificial Intelligence. 

Artificial Intelligence is the intelligence exhibited by machines that have ability to think.  In computer science, an ideal intelligent machine is a flexible rational agent that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of success at an arbitrary goal. There are statistical machines that automate and increasingly can outperform humans at certain pattern-recognition tasks and conscious machines, omnipotent machines or even reasoning machines will do much more. Irony is that they perform what is programmed and cannot make the judgment of right or wrong. They cannot take decisions if they encounter a situation unfamiliar to them. AI is currently at the cutting-edge science and technology. Researchers of AI want to bring in the emotional quotient to the machines along with the general intelligence.

Banking Robot has as such become a part of AI family used in a wide range of fields including robot control, remote sensing, law, stock trading, medical diagnosis and scientific discovery and toys. It continues to develop in numerous fields such as Computer Science, Medical Care, Heavy Industry, Aviation, Transportation, Telecommunications, Print & Electronic Media, Marketing, Finance and Music etc.

This may be termed as beginning of the use of AI in banking industry and coming together of various banks and technology giants will introduce mature models in the sector and more and more robots will gradually be installed in Indian banks.