Much like the advent of the internet, the presence of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (Gen AI) into our everyday lives has become unavoidable. Even if we aren’t actively using any of the myriad of applications such as ChatGPT ourselves, we are interacting everyday with some version of AI, including customer service chatbots, which are wholly AI generated.
In the fast paced and dynamic financial services sector, AI, GenAI and big data are already offering traditional and non-traditional banking institutions the opportunity for greater efficiencies and innovation. The technology’s transformative potential is revolutionising operations, enhancing customer interactions – in multiple languages – and creating new business models that match the changing needs of a digitally ‘always on’ population.
In an exciting three-day conference titled Banking on the Future, held in May 2024 and hosted by EFT Corporation, the topic of AI emerged as a major trend which is set to redefine the future of the banking sector. Key insights from the event included how AI might completely reshape how businesses operate, compete and grow in a digital age. With the capacity to generate text, code, images and data, AI will allow Africa’s financial institutions to scale their operations by reducing costs, increasing efficiencies and assist them to find new ways of doing business. In the intra continental trade context, AI also has the potential to revolutionise current payment processes, making them more efficient, secure and customer-centric.
AI and UX
AI’s potential to improve customer and user service experience relies on its generative capabilities. It can adapt to multilingual environments and deliver information in formats that suit the user – this could even be pictorial for semi-literate users. This makes the user experience of a website or financial process highly personalised, giving businesses a competitive edge to attract and retain customers. AI driven support systems such as chatbots and virtual assistants also replace human interaction and are available 24/7.
Scaling operations while reducing costs
Although there are fears from some quarters that AI might replace humans in the workplace, what it does in fact do is free people up to perform more complex activities, while AI manages time consuming, repetitive and routine tasks. This is also a cost saving step in a business’s transition in scaling up operations and streamlining human resource deployment.
Creating new business models
The introduction of AI technology into the banking sector has already advanced personalised banking as a service. Using advanced data analytics, financial services institutions can tailor investment and savings portfolios to users’ preferences and risk profile, as well as use AI to assess credit scores and the risk to the institution itself of taking on a client. A number of leading banking institutions including the Bank of America, Standard Chartered, HSBC, and the online bank Revolut, use AI for some or all of these functions.
Revolutionising payment processes
AI is revolutionising digital payment processes through its enhanced security capacity – rapid detection eliminates fraud and increases security, giving customers greater peace of mind. AI’s ability to tailor its interaction with users means that integrating AI into payment platforms makes payments more customer-centric and easier to navigate for each individual user.
The future of banking in Africa
The rapid adoption of digital technologies and non-traditional banking services on the African continent stems from mass mobile device ownership and the remoteness of some communities from brick-and-mortar banks. The local landscape has created a highly digitised financial services sector in which the possibilities for more advanced systems using AI are endless.
In the same way that cell phones enabled users to leapfrog landline-based communications, AI is assisting African banking and financial institutions to leapfrog traditional banking models, to create innovative, efficient and inclusive financial systems.
It is important, however, that the continent develops its own solutions for very local contexts. Issues of bias and so-called ‘WEIRD’ technology (western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic) may skew data sets used to determine AI output. If research and development does not include user specific information based on a broad sample, issues of human bias will persist in technology.
EFT Corporation is an African focused fintech provider whose newly established AI division is set to drive significant improvements in many aspects of the sector.
Human intuition remains a vital factor in the use of AI and GenAI technology. Multi-skilled teams that are engaged with the source material, able to spot errors and bring nuanced responses to the integration of new tech is essential in the successful implementation of AI tools.
GenAI is central to the future of payment hubs and the entire banking ecosystem, and EFT Corp stands at the forefront of this pioneering technology.
