Digital & Technology

China CITIC Bank International to launch iChatBot

China CITIC Bank International (CNCBI) has announced the launch of iChatBot, the first 24-hour AI voicebot phone enquiry service among banks in Hong Kong, in an effort to continue to step up FinTech adoption to drive service enhancement.

The first phase of the iChatBot service covers Putonghua, for which the speech recognition accuracy rate is higher, while the Bank will in future examine covering other languages, according to a press release.

CNCBI’s iChatBot injects FinTech into conventional phone banking service. Customers need only call a toll-free hotline and give their consent to the voicebot service to start interacting with iChatBot for enquiries on general banking services including account opening, account management, internet banking and inMotion, CNCBI’s all-in-one banking and investment app, free of service-hour constraints and saving wait time in phone enquiry service queue.

Customers may also choose to transfer the call or leave a voice message to the Bank’s customer service representatives for follow-up should they require further information or transactions.

Anne Lee, Deputy Head, Personal & Business Banking Group and Head of Sales & Distribution, CNCBI, said “The Putonghua speech recognition technology is approaching maturity with a 90% accuracy rate, whereas Cantonese accuracy is comparatively lower due to the dialect’s syntactic uniqueness. At present, therefore, the iChatBot service covers Putonghua primarily for new customers on the mainland. The Bank is looking to extend the service to other customers and will study actively the possibility of introducing Cantonese and English into the service so as to further enhance the iChatBot service.”

The rollout of iChatBot aligns with CNCBI’s innovative spirit with a commitment to continuously improving customer experience and service quality with the adoption of FinTech, according to the press release. Over the years, CNCBI has launched an array of market-first innovative services including the standalone security token mobile app CNCBI Token, deposit accounts binding to WeChat Pay Hong Kong Wallet and biometrics-enabled Touch Balance.

In 2018, CNCBI again launched inMotion with the truly remote account opening service, and subsequently added into the inMotion service line-up Hong Kong’s first truly virtual credit card Motion Virtual Credit Card, full-function securities trading mobile app inVest, insurance purchase services and robo-advisory service Robo 360. The comprehensive suite of virtual banking services on inMotion now encompasses account opening, spending, investment and insurance purchases.