AI in Banking: Implications for Agents, Advisors, and Salespeople?

With the implementation of the Watson software by Crédit Mutuel-CIC by June 2017, artificial intelligence seems to have established itself as a major trend in the banking sector.

Despite the enthusiasm such technological innovation can generate, AI also raises concerns: what about banking advisors? Will artificial intelligence replace human contact in our banks? Here are a few answers.

AI in Banks: What for?

With the digital revolution that has transformed most professional sectors in the space of about ten years, the banking sector has undergone profound changes. It is also one of the sectors that has invested the most in digital transformation: routine banking operations can now be carried out online, or on dedicated applications. Payments are secured thanks to codes delivered by SMS, and some banks have even bet on the “all-digital” approach, by developing pure players like Fortuneo or Monabanq — two subsidiaries of Crédit Mutuel.

In this context, bank customers are visiting branches less and less to make their transfers, insurance subscriptions, or credit applications. Victims of the success of their digital transformation, banks must now find solutions to meet the increasingly numerous digital demands of their customers. And it seems that artificial intelligence is one of the solutions adopted by banking groups to meet this new need.

The Challenges of Artificial Intelligence in the Banking Sector

Crédit Mutuel and its Watson software, developed by IBM, give us a first glimpse of the advantages and challenges of artificial intelligence within banks.

This software, already deployed in 5,000 branches of the banking group, is designed to assist Crédit Mutuel advisors rather than replace them. Its semantic program, coupled with an email analyzer, allows it to perform an initial sorting of electronic customer requests. It also offers pre-designed answers to customer service representatives, thus offering them a real time-saver.

The director of IBM France, Nicolas Sekkaki, is reassuring: “the goal is not to replace tasks, but to see what new things it can create”.

However, the banking sector faces very specific requirements that do not yet allow for the ‘total’ deployment of AI within customer services. Given the sensitive nature of data transmitted by customers, whether in the banking domain itself or in that of insurance and credit, artificial intelligence programs still lack the necessary reliability to replace advisors and sales agents.

Obstacles to AI Deployment in Banks

The lack of reliability of answers provided by artificial intelligence programs is not the only obstacle to their deployment within banks.

Contrary to a common belief, the installation and activation of an “intelligent” program are not enough to make it operational: human skills are necessary to educate and feed these software programs, whose operation relies on the quality of the information collected. Data management, as well as the training of advisors and sales representatives in the banking sector, are therefore major challenges for the democratization of AI, and still represent obstacles to its expansion today.

Finally, while banks will have to acculturate their employees to this type of tool, which does not seem destined to replace them, they will also have to face a major challenge: that of winning the buy-in and trust of their customers. Among the main obstacles to online purchasing, internet users cite a lack of trust, the fear of transmitting banking data to “faceless” websites. One can therefore legitimately wonder if the same internet users will be willing to entrust their most sensitive information to software, without going through a human intermediary.

The progress of artificial intelligence has allowed it to establish itself in banks, but remains insufficient to replace banking advisors. The impact of AI on this sector could therefore well occur at the level of training and career prospects, rather than at the level of banking jobs.

To effectively manage a human distribution network, download our White Paper: Driving Performance in the Digital Age