Artificial Intelligence (Ia), in the sense of a technological paradigm able to replicate human reasoning, is already a reality in banks operating in Italy. On an overall level, almost 90% of the realities that participated in an initial survey developed by ABI Lab has activated or is activating a project on artificial intelligence between initiatives to be studied, in the pilot phase or in production.
These are some preliminary results from the latest survey by ABI Lab, the Research and Innovation Center for the bank promoted by the Italian Banking Association, on investment priorities in Information and Communications Technology (ICT). The research was attended by 22 banks and banking groups, as well as four of the main external interbank suppliers, representative in terms of employees of three quarters of the banking world in Italy. It emerges that artificial intelligence is having a pervasive and significant impact for Italian banks.
Artificial Intelligence for the client
The areas of process on which you are working most concern:
- The contact center area (73% of respondents). In this field, more than two thirds of the initiatives have already passed the stage of study and are in production or at least in a pilot phase.
- Customer service processes (65%) on which there is particular attention to evaluate the use of advanced tools for the construction of a customized offer based on users' needs.
For internal support
Among other areas of possible application, we highlight the world of knowledge transfer, the so-called knowledge transfer. The reference is to the internal help desk, internal knowledge management, intranet services. 35% of the survey participants are working on all this.
Also the topic of credit analysis, credit scoring, is an area of particular attention, on which initiatives are active in the 38% of respondents.
The maturity of Artificial Intelligence solutions
Also intense is the activity of experimentation, research and implementation of pilot projects both in the internal and security processes of the banks, and there where the customer is involved. In the latter case, the objective is to carefully check the effectiveness of artificial intelligence technologies in external management.
The perspectives
In this transformation scenario through the Ia it must be kept in mind that:
- The applicable technologies will have to support the banking processes in digital transformation.
- Artificial Intelligence will not replace the person, but will be able to support their skills and accelerate the response time to the customer.
- It is important to understand that the Ia is not just about technology, but about processes, people, skills and organizational dynamics.
- It will be important to address the ethical and compliance issues, to frame the further potential of the various Ia paradigms in the bank.
- The attention of banks is often geared to exploring many areas of application of these technologies. The horizons of application are vast, all to be explored.