Budget 2017: When Banks Turn to Robots to Man Their Branches

Artificial intelligence makes serious inroads into the Indian banking system. (Photo: BloombergQuint)

Two of India’s largest private sector banks, ICICI Bank Ltd and HDFC Bank Ltd, are turning to artificial intelligence for a whole host of services, which would otherwise need a stronger workforce, be it for compliance or customer service.

While ICICI Bank’s Software Robotics is completing over 500 day-to-day banking processes, primarily focusing on compliance and verification work, its peer HDFC Bank has roped in a new employee – a humanoid, named IRA (Intelligent Robotic Assistant), who stands at the branch’s welcome desk, and is programmed to guide customers to the requisite counters.

The philosophy is to automate whatever we think can be automated.

NS Kannan, Executive Director, ICICI Bank 

Artificial intelligence and automation are now considered to be amongst the biggest threats to job creation, and industry voices across the board agree that so-called traditional jobs may soon cease to exist.

According to Infosys’ chief executive officer, Vishal Sikka, advances in technology is removing a lot of mechanical and scripted jobs, besides many related to business process outsourcing, IT and IT infrastructure operations. But automation will also lead to the creation of a whole new set of jobs, Sikka added.

Around 20 crore middle class young people would have no jobs by 2025 if our education system doesn’t keep up with the changes in automation and technology, Mohandas Pai, the chairman of Manipal Global Education Services told BloombergQuint in an interview.

And the level of automation is only going to get higher. Both ICICI and HDFC Bank say this is only the start, and there’s a lot more to come.

IRA’s developer, Asimov Robotics, believes that robots will definitely replace blue collar jobs in future.

If you look at India, India is very rich in human resources. But the fact is, for a lot of jobs like blue collar jobs, you won’t find resources. You won’t find people to work. Like security guards. People don’t want to work in that space. These are all the areas where robots will dominate in the coming future. Whether we digest it now or later, it will be there for sure. 

Jayakrishnan T, CEO, ASIMOV Robotics 

(This article was originally published in BloombergQuint)