Chatbot part of an array of new integrated banking solutions
Johannesburg, 13 June 2019 – Standard Bank Wealth is on a digital journey to improve customer experience. As part of this journey, we have developed the first end-to-end short-term insurance chatbot in SA and the innovative My360 App, which gives users a consolidated 360-degree view of their net wealth from a single dashboard.
“We are developing cutting edge online functionality for our clients, as well as adding new digital pillars to traditional offerings,” says Deepesh Thomas, the new Digital Head of Standard Bank Wealth.
The My360 App provides a global, consolidated view of someone’s entire financial portfolio across more than 20,000 global financial institutions from one touch point. The App allows customers to track and access asset, liability and risk cover regardless of institution, geography or the insurer where accounts reside.
“This is a real game-changer and the App is currently being piloted to selected clients and will be launched to the market later this year,” says Thomas.
Standard Insurance Limited is at the same time creating exciting new digital channels for customers to access solutions.
Chatbot capabilities already engage with customers and perform end-to-end fulfilment on digital channels and a referral portal allows advisors to refer their leads directly to the platform for fulfilment via the chatbot or the call centre. Quick-quote capability provides a fully binding quote in 5 minutes for vehicle, home contents, buildings, all-risk or personal liability insurance products.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) has the ability to scan license disks and driver’s licenses, thus eliminating delays in addressing customer queries. Added to this is the digitally signed debit order mandate, policy issuance and emergency SOS service – all digitally driven to ensure service in 8 minutes.
“The technology underpinning these moves is cutting edge and enabled the first motor insurance policy sales on Facebook Messenger in the world. The functionality makes it happen in record time and the chatbot never sleeps – it is up 24 hours a day,” says Thomas. It would previously have taken around half an hour to achieve this and then also during office hours.
Call centre quoting and fulfilment and app-based telematics – set to be released in the second quarter of this year – add to the array of upcoming solutions. Fully digitised quoting, fulfilment and claims are planned for later in the year. Other new apps and functionality in the pipeline include online debit order facilitation to reduce a clear pain point for most consumers, while digital funeral policy solutions are being planned for the near future. Additional functionality is set to change the shape of international banking.
“Standard Bank is on the move to becoming the leading integrated financial services organisation in, for and across Africa. It is all about speed and ease of use, with Standard Bank Wealth and Liberty ahead of the competition on many fronts,” concludes Thomas.
