OCBC to deploy generative AI bot for all 30,000 staff globally
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OCBC is the first local bank to roll out a generative artificial intelligence chatbot to all employees.
PHOTO: OCBC
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SINGAPORE – OCBC Bank has become the first local bank to go big on generative artificial intelligence (AI), putting a chatbot fuelled by the technology at the command of its 30,000 staff across 19 countries.
After a six-month trial, the bank’s head of group data office Donald MacDonald on Tuesday launched OCBC ChatGPT, which, similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, combs the Web and produces answers at the prompt of a text query.
The bot, developed with Microsoft Azure, will help employees at the bank’s 420 branches and offices across the globe with writing, research and ideation from November, he said.
The 1,000 employees in the trial had reported completing their task in half the normal time needed with the bot, fact-checking included, he added.
For security, information processed by OCBC ChatGPT remains hosted on the bank’s private cloud – a computing environment dedicated to only OCBC’s use.
The 91-year-old bank is one of the first in the world to deploy generative AI tools at scale, said Mr MacDonald, who cited American bank JP Morgan as another early adopter of the technology.
Generative AI is being used to personalise customer interactions, propose stock buys, and detect fraud and suspicious transactions for the bank.
Mr MacDonald said: “We also do things like creating actionable nudges, helping our customers save time and save money.”
He said customers could be prompted along these lines: “‘I can see that you’ve got $30,000 sitting idle in your current account. Do you want to earn more money, move it to the 360 account?’ or ‘I can see you’ve got Apple Music and Spotify. Do you really need both?’”
The bank is now using or piloting four generative AI functions.
These are broadly categorised as “Wingman”, which helps its team of coders write code; “Whisper”, which transcribes voice calls and makes summaries for its contact centres; “Buddy”, which pulls out information from 150,000 pages of company documents and records meetings for staff; and “Document AI”, which summarises documents such as financial reports.
AI already makes more than four million decisions a day on risk management, customer service and sales for the bank.
Mr MacDonald expects that number to surge to 10 million by 2025, when generative AI takes over more functions.
The bank’s 150-strong data science and engineering team, which oversees 250 AI models, plans to help its legal team manage documents and translate foreign language documents into English next.
