DBS Bank has been recognised as the Bank of the Year, Asia by The Banker, a member of the Financial Times Group, and Best Bank in Asia-Pacific by Global Finance. The bank has also been named "Safest Bank in Asia" by Global Finance for nine consecutive years from 2009 to 2017.

Many banks have been closing branches. As a consequence, we have seen the dramatic decline of the “Bank Teller”, which traditionally is an employee of a bank who deals directly with customers within a branch or office. One of our many predictions is that the future bank workforce will be a blend of employees and chatbots. With this in mind, DBS is now using a Chatbot as a “Bank Teller”, with the ability to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Their Chatbot “Bank Teller” can handle infinite parallel conversations with customers and prospects.

DBS uses Kasisto’s Kai, the underlying technology of MyKai, to allow customers to converse with the “Bank Teller” and conduct transactions such as transfers and bill paying. Furthermore, they can ask about their personal finances using messaging applications such as Facebook Messenger and eventually WhatsApp and WeChat, all of which are the top messaging applications used across the world.

Our expectation is that the Bank Teller Chatbot is the start of the new type of "employee". The growth of specialist chatbots is likely to emerge in the complex area of regulations. In 2015, there were over 50,000 regulatory updates in Financial Services worldwide. With this level of complexity, it goes way beyond the ability of employees and using traditional instruments such as “training” and “documented procedures” to ensure good governance.

Inevitably, such complexity is best handled through Regtech Chatbots designed to balance handling the knowledge of regulatory complexity, whilst masking this complexity from customers, employees and suppliers.    

This will lead to an ecosystem of RegTech Chatbots, each acting as a “subject matter expert”. The implication is that costly “subject matter experts” can be reduced, especially around 2nd and 3rd Level defence re: Compliance and Audit.

The blended workforce of employees and Chatbots will enable financial services to reach a new level of transparency, efficiency and effectiveness.

The implications are huge as the rising costs for compliance can now be reversed, whilst materially reducing the risks of non-compliance. By reducing regulatory burdens will enable greater flexibility for market and revenue growth as the combined workforce is able to become more agile and adaptive to continual change.