ICICI Bank deploys ''software robots'' to perform banking operations

Mumbai: The country`s largest private lender ICICI Bank here on Thursday became the first bank in India to deploy `software robots, that emulate human action, in its over 200 business processes, thereby reducing the response time to customers by up to 60 percent.

"The bank is the first in the country and among few, globally, to deploy `software robotics` that emulates human actions to automate and perform repetitive, high volume and time consuming business tasks cutting across multiple applications," ICICI Bank said.

"We have re-engineered over 200 business processes which are powered by software robots across various functions of the bank. We plan to more than double the software robots to over 500 by end of this fiscal," Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO, ICICI Bank, said.

This initiative marks a milestone in the banking innovation in the Indian banking industry as it joins a select group of overseas organisations which have deployed this unique state-of-the-art robotic technology in such a large way, Kochhar said.

The software robots are processing over 10 lakh transactions daily, bringing in operational efficiency, accuracy and a massive reduction in processing time for customer services, she said.

Software robots have reduced the response time to customers by up to 60 per cent and increased accuracy to 100 per cent thereby improving the bank`s productivity and efficiency, a statement from ICICI Bank said.

"With our retail banking growing at over 25 per cent every year, we will be ready to handle larger volumes with the same resources," Kochhar said.

"It will also enable our employees to focus on more value-added services while having better work-life balance," she added.

ICICI Bank, that has a network of 4,451 branches and 14,073 Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), said it has deployed these software robots across the organisation, including retail banking operations, agri-business, trade and forex, treasury and human resources management among others. 

"The bank has implemented the `Software Robotics` platform mostly in-house, leveraging recent advancements in artificial intelligence such as facial and voice recognition, natural language processing, machine learning and bots among others," the statement said.