The Managing Director of FBNBank Ghana, Victor Yaw Asante has emphasized the need for players in the banking sector to effectively leverage on modern technology, specifically Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive growth and financial inclusion.

With the enormous benefits that technology offers to the industry, Mr. Asante noted that AI was the future of banking and thus, the earlier industry players adopted and utilized AI in their service delivery, the better it would be for the future of the industry.

Speaking on the topic ‘The use of Artificial Intelligence in Customer Service Delivery,’at the just-ended Digital Banking Summit organized by the International Centre for Strategic Alliances in Accra,Mr.Asante revealed that a greater percentage of Ghanaians were gradually embracing the usage of technological tools to access banking services. He highlighted that banks must be able to tap into this new drive and interest for growth. “Currently, over 40 percent of customers now use technological tools deployed in banking adding that itwas positive for players in the industry” he said.

Mr. Asante revealed that by the year 2020, 85 percent of all customer interaction in the banking industry would be handled without human intervention. He underscored the importance of technology in service delivery stressing that “AI, chatbots and automated, self-service technologies would free up call center employees from routine tier-1 support requests so they can focus on more complex tasks.” “One of the benefits of AI” he said, “was in preemptively resolving customer service issues before they arose. According to the FBNBank MD, this could significantly lower customer abandonment rates.”

With the banking sector constantly evolving and competition growing, customer satisfaction was at the core of banks’ operations especially for bigger banks. “Large banks have a huge customer satisfaction burden, so they naturally look toward technologies that enable them accelerate and increase connectivity with customers” he said.

The Digital Banking Summit, which was under the theme ‘Digitisation of Banking Sector – Enroute to a cashless Africa’ had FBNBank Ghanaas the Regional Banking Partner and FBNBank Ghana’s parent bank, First Bank of Nigeria Limited being the Official Banking Partner.

The Summit focused on the open banking revolution, financial inclusion, the next step for mobile payments and Blockchain as a tool for security and collaboration. There was also attention on the new era of a big data driven financial sector and the role of automation as the first point of contact for the customer. Emphasis was placed on the role of artificial intelligence, robotics, machine and deep learning as well as the role of automation as the first point of contact for the customer.