OCBC powers AI unit with $10m investment

The bank aims to deploy the unit for its wealth advisory and loans financing segment.

OCBC is kickstarting its AI unit with $10m initial investment to develop in-house machine learning capabilities across a wide range of banking services including wealth advisory and loans financing.

According to a press release, the AI unit is housed in the bank’s Open Vault and is named AI Lab@TOV. Leveraging the bank’s data sandbox and APIs to experiment anonymous customer data, the team will experiment with emerging technologies before integration into the bank’s existing systems.

“With the set-up of our very own AI lab, we are able to experiment for the first time with deep learning neural networks and graphics processing units, which are heavily used in the gaming industry and hardly used in banking. This is an exciting new space to be in, especially for banking, and we welcome talent who have the passion to develop something new and fresh for the industry,” said Ken Wong, head of AI Lab@TOV.

AI Lab@TOV is also experimenting with natural language and speech processing technologies using research and technology from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) which could be used to create chatbot services.

The lab will also work with Amazon Web Services (AWS) DeepLens, the world’s first deep learning video camera for developers with the goal of providing a more personalised experience to OCBC customers by leveraging facial recognition technology, and could be deployed at branches or ATMs.