YES Bank plans to cut process time by 30% through automation

The country's fifth largest private sector bank, YES Bank, is working on automating several process and service touchpoints through bots.

The bank is also expecting to cut its process time by 30% through automation via artificial intelligence and machine learning backed bots.

"Bots are poised to be personal banking assistants and one point contact for all conversations and transactions with banks.  Since most chatbots are powered by AI, and are learning from their conversations with customers, they will turn more smart, personal and human.  This will help bankers create a customised wealth management experience for every customer," said Pralay Mondal, Senior Group President, Retail and Business Banking at YES Bank.

YES BANK's YES BOT is AI powered, and is currently available on Facebook messenger, and will soon be extended to the bank's website and mobile application.

"The bot is adept at conversing with the customer by processing natural language powered with cognitive messaging abilities and acts as a trusted advisor who is available to answer queries of customers 24/7. We expect that our AI powered bots will reach about 0.25 million customers by this fiscal," he said.

Post-demonetisation, digital payments space is continuing to grow, Mondal said, this  will not only create efficiency, productivity and convenience, but also help in creating more transparency.

"Now with GST implementation, the SME sector is gradually settling down in the new environment and as we move into the fourth quarter of this financial year, we believe that there will be significant growth in the SME sector as well. The corporate sector credit growth will take some more quarters to pick up. However, the combination of SME and retail growth should help in improving the overall credit growth in the banking system over the next few quarters," Mondal said.

The bank's  liability retail franchise has grown around 50% Y-o-Y and a lot of growth has come from CASA.   In the last one year, CASA mix has increased from 30.3% to 37.2% as on September 30, 2017.   The bank has also launched various retail asset products and offers a suite of products, which has helped retail assets grow by 78% on Y-o-Y basis.   "This growth will accelerate further with growth in retail business," he said.