By GINIKA OKOYE

Some bank customers have called on banks to adopt safe and home grown Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms in banking to facilitate complaints resolution.

Some of the customers who spoke to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday, said that AI adoption in banking would ensure timely and effective service delivery to customers.

Mrs Kate Onifade, a bank customer, said that AI adoption in banking and the financial system generally would help to remove bureaucracy experienced in lodging and resolving customers complaints in banks.

Onifade said that adopting AI in banking could help bankers trace the location of monies, especially in failed transactions.

?Before now, if you perform a bank transaction especially with Point of Sale (PoS) agents and it fails, it usually reverses by itself within some space of time but now, it rarely reverses except you visit the bank.

?This is frustrating and this needs to change,? she said.

Another customer, Mr Charles Idu, said that AI had the capacity to assist bankers to reduce their man hours.

Idu said that most AI platforms would facilitate speed in banking and all financial matters.

?I did a transaction with my bank application and my account was debited but the receiver did not receive the money up till now.

?I quickly rushed to the bank to complain to them but I was surprised they told me it will take three working days.

?The receiver was supposed to use the money to buy medication but the money is still pending,? he said.

Miss Zainab Husseni, a student, urged banks to conduct their research to know the AI platform that would effectively address their issues.

NAN recalls that some AI experts had said that the innovation could synergise with humans to reduce 90 per cent of customers service workload in banking and other financial services sector.

Tomiwa Adefokun, AI Leader, West Africa, Ernst and Young, said that AI would help customers to get required bank services in record time.

According to him, when AI synergises with human, customers can get services when and where they need it without necessarily minding if it is banking hours or the branch.

He said that an approximated 80 billion dollars would be saved in labour cost by 2026 due to agentic AI usage in contact centres.

Adefokun said that AI in financial services market was expected to grow from 20 billion dollars in 2023 to more than 130 billion dollars by 2030.

The expert listed some of the customers? services transformation aspects of AI to include AI driven on boarding, personalised banking services and agentic contact centre.

Adefokun said that the benefits of AI in banking included fraud detection and risks management, and financial inclusion.

The expert said that AI posed some skills gap, trust and explainability data management challenges in the financial services sector.

He said that an approximated 80 billion dollars would be saved in labour cost by 2026 due to agentic AI usage in contact centres.

?The future of financial institutions will be determined by institutions that act now and embrace AI and it?s revolution,? he said.

Dr Stanley Jacob, the President, Fintech Association of Nigeria, said that banks that would lead would be the ones that would optimise the use of AI. (NAN)

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