Why banks see AI as a shift from product selling to service

There has been a notable 80% reduction in contact centre handling times. 

Banks and insurers are urged to move away from product selling and focus on human-centered design, supported by artificial intelligence (AI), according to Colin Dinn, Managing Director of Platinion at Boston Consulting Group, Inc.

“We’ve always said that customer is the most important thing. Yet, we always design around a product that we want to sell, rather than what the customer really looks at would really be,” Dinn told the audience at the Asian Banking & Finance and Insurance Asia Summit in Singapore, today.

In his keynote, “From Transactions to Relationships: Crafting Hyper-Personalised Customer Journeys in the Future of Finance,” he questioned whether years of investment in digital platforms have really improved customer relationships. 

During COVID-19, banks and insurers poured resources into apps and online tools, hoping to get closer to their customers. 

But most digital services today are used mainly for payments and simple transactions. 

“During the COVID years, we invested a huge amount into digitalisation. But in more recent years, the quality of digital [experience]. It’s not greatly thought of as key,” he said.

Rather than making institutions more relevant, digitalisation has often reduced customer engagement. 

“This is showing that we’re starting to forget. That whole pattern of how we interact,” Dinn warned.

AI, if applied well, could change this. 

“It’s now with AI that we’re gonna have a paradigm shift. The goal of looking at the customer rather than the transaction,” Dinn said.

The benefits also include efficiency. Dinn pointed to up to 80% reductions in contact centre handling times. 

But he stressed that AI is not just about automation: “The point in building AI is not about putting innovative technology together. It’s a lot more complex in the thinking process and the design that you’re going to put in these models.”

“Human-centric in AI design is really important. Please, if you get nothing else, make sure that you think about human-centric in AI. Because that is absolutely critical,” Dinn said.

This shift also requires new skills. Too many firms remain siloed and process-driven.

“Very few organisations are outcome-based. It is very, very rare,” he noted. What the industry needs most, he added, are “super business analysts”—people who truly understand both the business and the customer.

Dinn believes the foundations are already in place. “A year ago. I would say it wasn’t [possible]. Now, I believe it’s very much in place. The first iterations will be six months,” he said.