RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra calls on banks to adopt AI to address consumer complaints

India's central bank-regulated entities can leverage artificial intelligence internal controls to address consumer complaints on mis-selling and aggressive practices, central bank governor Sanjay Malhotra said on Monday.

Ninety-five commercial banks in India received over 10 million customer complaints in the 2023-2024 financial year, Malhotra said.

"With the rapidly growing customer base and expanding suite of products, this may grow if we do not get our act together," he added.

Financial institutions can use AI to analyse large volumes of data to detect spikes in issues such as ATM failures or erroneous charges, and receive pre-emptive alerts, Malhotra said in a speech.

AI-driven chatbots and voice recognition tools can also be used to eliminate language barriers in a linguistically diverse country like India, Malhotra added.

He also called for financial institutions to invest in human capital to improve customer service and grievance redressal processes.