Singapore’s OCBC Bank unveiled an AI-enabled ‘avatar banking’ app, allowing clients round-the-clock access to virtual relationship managers.
Yet CEO Tan Teck Long pledged the new AI avatars won’t replace the bank’s human employees, as he pledged to hire 600 new relationship managers. “Instead of thinking that AI will reduce our workforce, we hope to use it to increase the workforce and support a much larger business,” Tan said during a press conference at OCBC’s Singapore headquarters on July 1, in one of his first engagements with the press since becoming CEO on Jan. 1.
The platform currently features two avatars named “Wendy” and “Wayne,” modelled after OCBC’s own staff members. Users can pose questions to the avatars, trained on proprietary data from the bank’s research team.
“They know your portfolio and are personalized to you,” Tan explained. “For example, you can ask them what it might mean to add SpaceX to your portfolio, and whether the stock is speculative.”
The new app, named OCBC WoW, will first be rolled out as a beta version to fifty users, then to OCBC’s wealth clients, and eventually to its retail banking segment. “We’re not starting with our retail clients, since they tend to have simpler needs,” Tan explained.
