Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning In Banking

With innovations augmenting in every sector, there comes an imperative need for banking and commerce to reinvent the customer experiences in the financial services. Artificial intelligence (Al) in this regard, plays a crucial role, where they could extend the creative problem solving capabilities and productivity of human workforce and deliver superior business results.

In the same context, BW Businessworld in collaboration with Wipro Limited and Intel, brought together industry experts, for an exclusive discussion and set the stage for a dialogue on 'Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Banking' on 15th Dec at JW Marriott Sahar, Mumbai. Leading a way forward, the forum discussed the possibilities that Al has opened across businesses.

The evening was commenced by Mr Surajit Roy, BFSI Vertical Head - IME, Wipro Ltd, who welcomed the participants and the delegates, setting the tone for discussion with the recent influx of digitalisation and Al in the sector.

Giving a perspective on the same, Mr. Pravin Hungund, General Manager, CTO Office - IME, Wipro Ltd shared how Al has shifted from being knowledge driven to more data driven today. "Al is more of mimicking the human actions

rather than the human being himself. Anything that gets computed can get measured, controlled and automated. Reasoning, linguistic, statistics, all these areas are the user cases of the same where Al is playing a huge role'; says Mr Hungund.

The panel discussion on 'Intelligent Analytics & Machine Learning: Expanding New Horizons in Banking' was moderated by Mr Pranjal Sharma, Advisory Board, PACI, World Economic Forum and columnist with BW Businessworld. Mr Sharma begins by quoting Stephan Hawking, saying how Al could be the best thing to have happened to humanity or the worst, depending on how we manage it. Taking the cue from the same, Ms. Shilpa Desai, Head - Digital Banking, IDFC, begin the discussion on how institutions today have deployed such technology.

"The ecosystem around us has evolved to an extent, starting from the basic transaction to very high end usage with rise in the customer expectation. Digital, therefore becomes core to the strategy and is not restricted to mere going online. We are adapting paperless operations and when there is an addition of Al to these basic changes, it could completely change the way customer interaction is managed with tremendous scope ranging from fraud detection or prevention to predictive analysis'; says Ms Desai.

Competitive advantage and differentiation has become a matter of survival for businesses,"Not everything digital is sustainable. We use a filtration model to understand if it provides any operational efficiency, costs, access to new business line or a channel, change the paradigm of services etc. Hence this forces us to be on a look out for new technologies, where Al plays an important role'; expresses Mr. Vivek Venugopalan Nair, EVP & Head - Digital Transaction Banking.

Striking an instance of wealth management, which was considered very traditional and under penetrated in the online category Shi I pa opinionated, "We are trying to create the entire capability with the service provider to be able to make robot advisory, looking at what is it about the client that we know, predict his future requirement and contextual recommendation on managing his portfolio''.

Mr. Brajesh Ahuja, Industry Technical Specialist (Industry Solution & Architecture), Intel Technology, deliberated his views on the Intel Al journey and shared a global perspective of the industry. "Three basic factors that have led to the resurgence of Al- One, the growing volume of data with digitalisation, second, advancement of the hardware technology and third, advancement in the research area of newer networks''.

"At Intel, we have created a whole ecosystem of Al, where application can be developed and deployed which includes our already existing suits of compute, storage and network, which is being advanced to the next level. Apart from that there are open source multiple frameworks in the market, with which we work and optimize. On top of all this, we have vertical applications, where we scale with our partners including Wipro:'

In a quick interactive session, moderated by Mr Pranjal Sharma, questions were raised on the authenticity of the on line transaction or usage, from a consumer's point of view and the authority answerable. "One needs to set the on line category Shi I pa opinionated, "We are trying to create the entire capability with the service provider to be able to make robot advisory, looking at what is it about the client that we know, predict his future requirement and contextual recommendation on managing his portfolio''.

Mr. Brajesh Ahuja, Industry Technical Specialist (Industry Solution & Architecture), Intel Technology, deliberated his views on the Intel Al journey and shared a global perspective of the industry. "Three basic factors that have led to the resurgence of Al- One, the growing volume of data with digitalisation, second, advancement of the hardware technology and third, advancement in the research area of newer networks''.

"At Intel, we have created a whole ecosystem of Al, where application can be developed and deployed which includes our already existing suits of compute, storage and network, which is being advanced to the next level. Apart from that there are open source multiple frameworks in the market, with which we work and optimize. On top of all this, we have vertical applications, where we scale with our partners including Wipro:'

In a quick interactive session, moderated by Mr Pranjal Sharma, questions were raised on the authenticity of the on line transaction or usage, from a consumer's point of view and the authority answerable. "One needs to set the online category Shilpa opinionated, "We are trying to create the entire capability with the service provider to be able to make robot advisory, looking at what is it about the client that we know, predict his future requirement and contextual recommendation on managing his portfolio''.

Mr. Brajesh Ahuja, Industry Technical Specialist (Industry Solution & Architecture), Intel Technology, deliberated his views on the Intel Al journey and shared a global perspective of the industry. "Three basic factors that have led to the resurgence of Al- One, the growing volume of data with digitalisation, second, advancement of the hardware technology and third, advancement in the research area of newer networks''.

"At Intel, we have created a whole ecosystem of Al, where application can be developed and deployed which includes our already existing suits of compute, storage and network, which is being advanced to the next level. Apart from that there are open source multiple frameworks in the market, with which we work and optimize. On top of all this, we have vertical applications, where we scale with our partners including Wipro:'

In a quick interactive session, moderated by Mr Pranjal Sharma, questions were raised on the authenticity of the on line transaction or usage, from a consumer's point of view and the authority answerable. "One needs to set the expectation right and not expect the customer to understand or pre-empt, but just guide. Through the process and the design, we allow one thing at a time and state simple steps. At every step, the consumer is given an opportunity to interact with someone available for help, virtually''.

On similar lines Mr. Pravin Hungund, stated, "Today, there is content within the content, such as video conferencing, in a manner that allows the customer to feel safe and secure. Customer discomfort can be monitored in the digital world where a virtual assistant can be invoked, which validates the entire concept of human machine interface and the changes it could bring to the system''.

With the growing need for innovation, in the second round of discussion on 'Al and Banking growing in the future', Mr. Sudin Baraokar, Head - Innovation, 581, discussed how there is a more formal approach towards the innovation today, "There are 2 kinds of approaches, firstly, a defensive strategy, where we look at the emerging tech which takes it own time to mature like a block chain. Second is the rate of pace of disruption, requiring us to adapt the emerging technologies''.

"At 581, we are looking at the automations, like using Bots, RPAs, in-touch branches etc. We want to continue to make sure how we get the best customer experience through these technologies'; concluded Mr Baraokar.