The Chief Executive Officer of Access Bank Plc, Herbert Wigwe, has stated that in order for banks and Financial Technology (FinTech) operators to remain competitive, there is the need for them to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI), Nairametrics reports.
Wigwe stated this while speaking during the Africa FinTech Foundry (AFF) Disrupt 2019 conference.
The banker said Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Cloud Computing, Virtual Reality, Robotics and Cryptocurrency have all brought immense opportunities for banks by helping to improve the way customers access and manage finances.
According to Wigwe, with automation technology, banks and Fintechs are able to grant credit in seconds. He stated that the review of 12,000 documents used to take 360,000 hours. Today, this could be done in seconds using AI.
The Access Bank boss told Nairametrics that robotics technology is used to serve customers in banks, even as there are so much that could be done with data. For instance, big data analytics helps intelligent banks to understand their customers.
Wigwe stated further that from a business standpoint, the traditional banking environment did not provide opportunities for scalability. This is because its manual nature was slow and costly, thereby limited growth. However, technology has made it a lot easier to scale.