Enhancing customer experience is the top business driver for Indian financial services organisations to implement AI. A whopping 83 percent of survey respondents cited it as the reason for AI implementation, according to PwC-FICCI report titled, “Uncovering the ground truth: AI in Indian financial services”. Additionally, more than 80 percent of the survey respondents from the banking and financial services industry say that they have deployed chatbots to make customer servicing easy.
Key highlights
● Top use cases: 82 percent of the survey respondents say that they have deployed chatbots to make customer servicing easy. 65 percent of them have deployed fraud detection AI engines, making it the second most common use case in the FS industry, followed by 56 percent who have deployed virtual assistants.
● Top business drivers: 82 percent of respondents listed enhancing customer experience as the top business driver for implementing AI. Improving productivity (57 percent) and increasing revenue (56 percent) were the other main goals for adopting AI.
● Top concerns: 60 percent of survey respondents cited the privacy of consumers and security of data and the approval of the use of AI engines as the biggest concern for AI implementation. Additional areas of concern were the integration, operationalisation and maintenance of AI infrastructure, and the very distinctive and progressive skills required for success in AI.
● Data architecture: Less than half the respondents think they are ready to scale up to meet business needs for the next five years. 69 percent of respondents say that they have a single unified data repository and almost 40 percent have an enterprise-wide data governance framework.
● AI in the organisational structure: 34 percent of survey respondents said they had independent centres of excellence for AI-led innovation, followed by 21 percent who listed business units as the drivers of AI implementation in their organisations.
Risks around security, privacy to be differentiators
Sudipta Ghosh, Partner & Leader – Data & Analytics, PwC India, said, “The Indian financial services sector is already using AI as a key enabler for enhancing customer experience, improving operational efficiency and managing business risks. Maturity of using and adopting AI-enabled solutions with a deeper understanding of not just the business case, technology and data but also the risks around security, privacy and accountability will differentiate the leaders from the rest.”
Vivek Belgavi, Partner & Leader – Fintech, PwC India, said, “AI is used every day within payments, credit risk, investment recommendations and particularly in the area of intelligent digital assistants that handle regular customer service enquiries and tasks. Indian BFSI organisations looking to move ahead on the AI adoption curve can use AI to boost revenues through increased personalisation of services and embedding intelligence in automation and digital ecosystem partnerships.”
Jyoti Vij, Deputy Secretary General, FICCI, said “The adoption of AI in the financial services industry is increasing at a rapid pace offering opportunities to both reduce costs and generate new revenue sources. The applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in data analytics and customer service can enable more personalised and faster customer experiences, provide much better insights and support automation of back-end workflows offering greater operational efficiencies. While both fintechs and incumbents are putting together plans for adoption of AI, data quality and access to data as well as access to suitable talent are seen as major obstacles to implementing AI.”
