Axis bank to launch chat bots for more personal banking experience

Axis Bank, India’s third largest private bank, is set to launch intelligent banking chat bots to make mobile banking services more conversational. [caption id=“attachment_3106456” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] The bank tied up with Active Intelligence Pte or Active.ai, a Singapore-based fintech platform, to launch the bots which will enable customers to chat through its mobile banking app and messaging platforms such as Facebook messenger. “We are enabling new digital technologies to make it easy and simpler for customers to engage with us. Users are moving to an unstructured form of engagement, we want to be where customers are. Active.ai will help us engage with our customers in a conversation — in a personal and contextual manner in the digital space,” said Rajiv Anand, executive director of Retail Banking in Axis Bank, in a press release. “A new era of personalised banking and commerce is emerging wherein customers can converse with brands and financial institutions in a natural language and through their preferred mode of communication. In the future, customers will just walk to micro branches with voice enabled IoT (Internet of Things) devices to engage with the banks for services,” said Ravi Shankar, CEO and Co-Founder of Active.ai. According to a Times of India report, chat bots are expected to reduce long-term costs for the bank, as artificial intelligence helps create a wider database on customer needs and on the other hand, customers will find chat bots to be a more hassle-free alternative as compared to bank visits, and phone calls.