And finally…RBS launches AI virtual assistant app

The Royal Bank of Scotland has launched a new mobile app messaging service that uses an AI virtual assistant called Cora which it says will help customers get answers to their basic banking queries in seconds.

The technology will be able to answer 200 banking queries without the need for customers to queue for an answer and where Cora isn’t able to provide the information, the message will be sent to a human advisor for them to handle.

The service is available 24 hours a day. Customers interact with Cora by typing their questions into a chat window before an answer is presented by it just moments later. This helps free up time for staff to deal with complicated problems that require much more critical thinking.

The Cora element of the messaging service is already available on the bank’s online help pages, holding 25,000 conversations every week across all of the bank’s brands. But this is the first time in Scotland an AI virtual assistant in a mobile banking app has been launched with customers. Over time, Cora will be trained to handle more complicated questions and its answers will become increasingly accurate.

The messaging service can answer questions such as:

Frans Woelders, chief digital officer at Royal Bank of Scotland, said: “Our messaging service is a great complement to our online, telephone and branch help services. We know from using Cora on our web pages that customers have found it easy to use and they value a service which is quick, doesn’t involve queuing and can be used at any time of the day.”