Singapore’s OCBC Bank unveiled an AI-enabled ‘avatar banking’ app, allowing clients round-the-clock access to virtual relationship managers.
Yet CEO Tan Teck Long said the new AI avatars won’t replace the bank’s human employees, as he pledged to hire 600 new relationship managers. “Instead of thinking that AI will reduce our workforce, we hope to use it to increase the workforce and support a much larger business,” Tan said during a press conference at OCBC’s Singapore headquarters on July 1, in one of his first engagements with the press since becoming CEO on Jan. 1.
