ICICI Bank’s “I, Robot” Moment
ICICI Bank introduces “software robots” to take over 200 banking processes
Remember the Will Smith movie where robots attempt to take over humanity? Well, ICICI Bank may not have designed any of those but it has developed what it calls “software robots” which have taken over nearly 200 processes across the bank.
According to Chief Executive Officer Chanda Kochhar, this is part of the bank’s move to leverage technology to improve efficiency of banking services. The bank has, over the past few years, sent teams to automotive companies, airlines and hotels to look at ways in which these industries have automated processes. It is now trying to use some of the learnings from across industries within the bank.
The automotive sector is a prime example of use of automation to improve productivity. Some factories like Tesla’s in the Netherlands are run almost entirely by robots. While a similar scenario is unlikely in the banking sector immediately, Kochhar wants to automate as much as possible to improve the speed and efficiency of transactions.
“We plan to double the number of processes under software robots to over 500 by the end of the financial year,” said Kochhar at a press conference. “Also, the number of internal transactions that software robots perform is expected to rise to 20 lakh per day from 10 lakh now.”
The bank has developed these software robots “mostly in-house” using artificial intelligence, natural language processing, machine learning, and bots, it said in a news release.
The processes that employees have been divested of are repetitive, high volume, and time consuming business tasks. “At ICICI Bank, software robots have reduced the response time to customers by up to 60 percent and increased accuracy to 100 percent, thereby sharply improving the bank’s productivity and efficiency,” it said.
Some of the business segments where these robots are being used include retail banking, trade and forex and treasury. Lending and trading decisions, however, are not being automated, said bank officials.
Will the introduction of more software robots lead to a reduction in the bank’s hiring plans or the current headcount? Kochhar says no. Bank officials insisted that hiring over the past few years has only increased.
The bank believes that the introduction of robots has enabled its employees to focus more on value-added and customer-related functions.