Financial services group, DBS, recently unveiled India’s first mobile-only bank, digibank, offering a technology suite that ranges from biometrics to artificial intelligence for bank consumers. DBS Bank’s digibank claims to do away with form filling and boasts of a paperless, signature-less and branchless system.
Piyush Gupta, CEO, DBS says, “India’s banking system is at the cusp of massive change, and as a bank committed to shaping the future of banking, we are excited to roll out a revolutionary, mobile-only bank. With digital, we are able to create a completely different customer experience. What’s more, digibank’s efficiencies and lower costs enable us to pass on significant benefits to customers in the form of greater customer value.”
Surojit Shome, CEO, DBS India, says, “Among the Singapore banks, DBS has the largest presence in India. This reflects our long-standing commitment and confidence in the market. Over the years, the bank has grown its corporate banking and SME franchise meaningfully. Going forward, we would like to extend our reach in the consumer segment as well. With a billion Aadhaar cards and over 200 million smartphone users in India, the opportunity for growth with digibank is huge.”
With digibank, customers can open their accounts without the requirement of any paperwork, (thanks to its paper-less system) at more than 500 DBS partner outlets across the country. Instead of paper, the customer’s identification and authentication is done using the Aadhaar Card — a national identification card issued to Indians, which also acts as biometric identification.
Artificial Intelligence kicks in
Here is where the artificial intelligence comes in, the customer service is provided by a 24×7 AI-driven virtual Assistant. digibank’s clients can have a chat with the virtual assistant for FAQs and performing banking transactions. DBS claims that the virtual assistant understands natural language and has learning ability, it is able to respond in real-time and has already anticipated and answer to 10,000 customer questions, with new knowledge added each passing day. The company behind this AI technology is Kasisto, the US based fintech that has partnered with DBS for this experimental conversational technology.
digibank also sports an intelligent, intuitive budget optimizer that helps customers do their budgeting, track expenses and analyze purchasing trends. The function understands customer behavior and preferences, synthesize data, and provides recommendations on the basis of the analysis. For example, post studying the customer’s spending habits, it can recommend relevant and contextual marketing offers such as restaurant discounts or coffee vouchers. It also studies customers’ spending patterns and prompts them if they are overspending, if a customer’s savings regularly exceed his or her expenditure, digibank will provide suggestions on how to save.
According to DBS, digibank has an inbuilt security that is safer than the One-Time Passwords (OTPs) system as most bank customers are used to receiving OTP via SMS, and then typing codes into pages to authorize their mobile banking transactions. digibank has an embedded soft token security, that avoids the need to wait for SMSes to arrive.
