YES BANK partners with Microsoft to strengthen its artificial intelligence powered banking solutions

YES BANK has partnered with Microsoft to strengthen its first of its kind, artificial intelligence-enabled chatbot, YES ROBOT, with advanced NLP engine LUIS (Language Understanding Intelligent Service) and other cognitive services, capable of understanding and resolving the evolving banking needs of customers without the need for human intervention.

Built on Microsoft’s modular and customizable AI platform, the all-new, reinvigorated YES ROBOT enables users to perform financial and non-financial banking transactions by employing conversational AI equipped with extensive financial knowledge, thereby relieving customers from the hassle of navigating through multiple web pages.

Commenting on the partnership, Ritesh Pai, chief digital officer, YES BANK, said: “YES BANK has been one of the early adopters when it comes to leveraging machine learning and AI. Recognizing that chatbots would be game changers in the industry, providing a major competitive advantage to banks, we had started working on automating several processes and service touchpoints through Bots as early as 2016. The reinvigoration of YES ROBOT in-house, using Microsoft’s cognitive services aims to further enhance customer service by personalizing interactions and reducing the time-of-first-response to just a few seconds”.

“The aim is to make the whole service experience more personalized and instant, so that the chatbot can evolve and operate as a full-fledged banking assistant in future,” adds Ritesh

Anup Purohit, chief information officer, YES BANK, added, “We focused on building a holistic AI ecosystem equipped with NLP components, Machine Learning models and other AI services.  YES ROBOT is a round-the-clock banking assistant developed by our in-house technology team using Microsoft Azure cognitive services. While customers can launch the chatbot on social media platforms such as Facebook, in future, we plan to integrate the bot and provide access through other channels.”

Meetul Patel, COO, Microsoft India, said: “YES BANK is taking a big step towards its vision of creating a bank of the future. This innovative solution leverages the latest technologies to help customers interact with the bank in new, more efficient, and scalable ways. Our teams have partnered to integrate Microsoft’s Azure Cognitive Services with existing systems to deliver this intelligent chatbot. It is one of YES BANK’s many innovations, and we are extremely proud to be a part of its journey to bring the best of technology to its customers.”

A customer can apply for over 65 banking products, check his/her eligibility for a loan and then get serviced by a Relationship Manager after all the basic checks are done by the Bot. YES ROBOT can provide an indicative loan amount using Machine Learning (ML) and advanced credit scoring algorithms. One of the most pivotal features of this chatbot is the option to book fixed deposits (FDs) and recurring deposits (RDs) by simply conversing with it, without the need of registration or remembering passwords (only OTP based authentication is required).

The Bot has been widely accepted by the Bank’s customers, testimony to which is Rs. 5.2 billion worth deposits booked through YES ROBOT since December 2018. Even with human errors, the chatbot can identify the intent of the user with over 90% accuracy and over 8.3 million customer interactions have already been reported on YES ROBOT since its launch.

The chatbot allows customers to comprehensively manage their Credit Card, view summary, bill payment, reward points and international card usage.

Intuitive loan eligibility calculators understand customer’s unique requirements and provides them with an indicative loan amount. A lead ID is generated for eligible customers and real-time RM assistance is provided for further processing of loan.