Banks meet the metacosm, can they spark

Since last year, the concept of metacosmology in the capital market has been on fire. In the wake of the boom, many financial institutions are eager to try, and Baixin Bank rushed to launch its first virtual digital employee AIYA on December 30 last year.

It is worth looking forward to, after the emergence of virtual digital employees, will there be virtual counters, lobby managers of virtual digital people, or even virtual wealth management products? Do virtual employees and products have real value? When the bank and the metaverse meet, what kind of spark can be sparked?

The value of "virtual employees"

Back in 2019, virtual digital employees have already appeared in the banking industry. On December 13, 2019, SPDB's digital employee "Xiaopu" was officially inaugurated; on December 17 of the same year, Everbright Bank also launched a virtual bank employee, financial advisor "Sunshine Xiaozhi".

At that time, the brightest label on the bank's virtual digital employees was "AI artificial intelligence technology". During the COVID-19 pandemic, the technology optimized the remote service of banks, saving banks costs and improving service efficiency. According to Yang Bingbing, vice president of Everbright Bank, in the period of about half a year since its launch, it was the early stage of the new crown pneumonia epidemic that the online feed peak service of Sunshine Xiaozhi artificial intelligence robots accounted for more than 96%, and the cumulative service exceeded 30 million customers.

As an intelligent robot, Sunshine Xiaozhi was actually born in 2015, and it was not until 2019 that there was an image of a virtual digital person. When it was first born, Sunshine Xiaozhi was just an intelligent text robot, and customers could only get business knowledge answers by typing on the keyboard to enter questions. By 2017, Sunshine Xiaozhi was upgraded to an intelligent voice robot that could achieve interactive voice chat. After iterative upgrading of technology, the communication with customers is smoother and more personic.

Taking the internal data of August 2018 as an example, at that time, the average daily incoming line volume was 23221, of which 95.06% of the problems were completely solved by Sunshine Xiaozhi, and the business accuracy rate reached 96.45%. According to internal calculations of the bank, it is equivalent to 179 replacement manpower. And this is just the labor cost saved by Sunshine Xiaozhi in 1 month.

The design of virtual digital employee images for intelligent robots was originally intended to improve the service experience. Jin Tian, a senior researcher at the Digital Economy Research Institute of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, believes that the first consideration for banks to launch virtual digital employees is to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

SpDB statistics show that in the intelligent customer service and intelligent outbound call scenarios, the robot can receive 80,000 calls a day, provide customer account management and other services, and at the same time call out 500,000 calls per day on risk tips, business notifications and other scenarios; in the APP channel, the financial assistant service provided to retail users can provide thousands of product knowledge questions and answers to help customers self-select wealth management products.

In 2021, SPDB will even empower the service capabilities of digital employees to the North Bund Government Self-service Service Center in Hongkou District, Shanghai, helping the virtual digital person "Xiaohong" there to provide more than 300 kinds of one-netcom business consulting and guidance services for residents and enterprise users.

Jintian analysis believes that in the past, banks had obvious channel-heavy characteristics, and the number of front-line employees was huge, which was also a necessary configuration for face-to-face marketing with customers. However, in recent years, with the change of customer behavior habits, some manual positions have been replaced by digital services. In addition to meeting the processing needs of standardized business, digital employees can also better "understand" customers, explore potential business, and further accelerate the lightweight transformation of corresponding business scenarios due to the support of big data and artificial intelligence technology.

A new space for digital transformation

In recent years, commercial banks have been running on the track of digital transformation. The rapid development of artificial intelligence, 5G, cloud computing, blockchain and other technologies has greatly promoted the digital transformation of financial institutions.

The rise of the current concept of metacosmology undoubtedly provides a new imagination space for the digital transformation of banks.

Baixin Bank announced "Welcoming metacosm" at the same time as launching digital employee AIYA. Chen Longqiang, chief strategy officer of Baixin Bank, said that he hopes to change the traditional financial supply mode through new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing.

According to reports, different from the positioning of other banks' virtual customer service, AIYA, as the "AI virtual brand officer" of Baixin Bank, assumes the role of future bank explorer and brand concept communicator, and will continue to learn and evolve in the future, enhance AI computing power and financial wisdom, and be active in short videos, virtual live broadcasts, APP and other scenarios to better communicate and interact with users.

Virtual digital employees can interact with customers 24 hours a day, saving banks costs and enabling them to have a better experience. More importantly, the virtual digital person is an important interactive node of the metaverse, which is of great significance for the future entry into the financial consumption scene.

If you want to ask what is the core word of the bank's retail business? The answer must be "scene".

At present, the competition for financial consumption scenarios has entered a white-hot state. The dust has settled on the "horse racing" of all parties, and the latecomers can only find another way. From Koura and Sunshine Incosan wearing banking overalls to AIYA in sports and leisure clothes, the image of the bank's virtual digital employees is quietly changing, becoming more youthful and vibrant.

Industry experts believe that virtual digital people will take on more functions in the future. Jintian said that the launch of virtual digital employees, in addition to integrating the functions of undertaking the original intelligent robots, can also be applied in live broadcasts, short videos and other scenarios to help brand communication and gain the attention of a wider range of customers.

Chen Longqiang believes that the business model and service form of banks in the future have been quietly changing, especially the interaction methods of young people have been different. Fintech, virtual digital employees and digital assets will become an important new starting point for banks' digital transformation. At present, Baixin Bank has realized the combination of digital bank cards, digital collections, blockchain and other technologies, which can provide financial institutions and users with services such as issuance, collection, purchase, storage, transfer and confirmation of rights of digital assets, and form a unique ownership certificate for each digital asset.

It is still in the exploratory attempt stage

According to the "2020-2021 Meta-universe Development Research Report" released by Tsinghua University last year, the meta-universe industry is still in the early stage of development, with the characteristics of immature and unstable emerging industries, and there are many risk points. In the view of industry experts, if finance is to serve the metaverse of the virtual world, it also needs to wait for the metacosm to take shape and have a mature set of operating logic.

Industry experts believe that there will be various commercial activities in the meta-universe, involving daily consumption and financial transactions, and financial technology is needed to provide corresponding support solutions. At present, most of the virtual digital employees in the financial industry are in the stage of exploration and attempt, and there is still a certain distance from large-scale commercial promotion, and more application scenarios with strong matching degrees need to be established, and a wider promotion and application may be realized in the future in the metaverse.

Due to the huge imagination of the metacosm, some commercial banks have begun to lay out. On December 27 last year, at the press conference of Baidu's meta-universe product "Xilang", ICBC Hebei Xiong'an Branch announced as the first batch of financial institutions to "settle in" Xilang. Recently, the Bank of Jiangsu also publicly stated that the bank began to lay out the financial metacosm based on the research and judgment of the underlying logic of Internet financial development and digital finance, combined with its own advantages.

Will the large-scale use of digital virtual employees in the future no longer require human services? For banks to accelerate digital development, Yang Bingbing believes that banks' current digital transformation should pay more attention to employees. "It's important to give employees a real sense of gain. With the improvement of the degree of digitalization and the deepening of management, on the one hand, the digital replacement rate of the client is getting higher and higher, on the other hand, the internal division of labor is becoming more and more detailed, the number of people is becoming more and more insufficient, or there are not many changes in the employee end, and the digital feeling is not high, which breaks everyone's consensus on digitalization, and the support of employees for digitalization will gradually be marked with a question mark. ”

"Let employees act as participants in the bank's digital transformation process, rather than bystanders, provide employees with more innovative positions, and actually experience a sense of gain." Yang Bingbing said.

At the same time, there are also many experts who remind that the metacosm is currently more of a concept for the financial field. Metacosmity is the direction that the digital transformation of the banking industry should focus on, but it cannot be hyped as a gimmick, and it must not be misleading to consumers. (Economic Daily reporter Lu Min)