Absa chief digital officer Subash Sharma. (Photograph by Lesley Moyo)
Absa is increasingly deploying agentic artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, and has upgraded its AI virtual assistant, Abby.
The big-four bank’s digital future was unveiled yesterday during its inaugural Digital AI Conference in Sandton, Johannesburg, to industry stakeholders and media.
Chief digital officer Subash Sharma said it was time to move from experimentation with AI technology, to full execution.
“We can’t merely focus on efficiency gains (across our business). Rather, how do we create new revenue streams, new value propositions? We want something we can put in front of a customer to improve their lives.”
He explained that agentic AI could enhance customer experience through digital agents, be the basis of internal tools that support frontline staff (including wealth advisors and contact centre representatives) and help build incident prevention root cause analysis to improve security and operational automation.
In his opening address, Gavin Cope, managing executive for data and analytics at Absa, argued that while AI tools are being used by various organisations to enhance efficiencies, the technology has to be pushed further.
“It’s not just about productivity gains, it’s about a new way of thinking, a new way of doing work. If we do this right, we don’t just become more efficient, we create space and time for what we’re really good at,” said Cope.
A panel discussion around women leading the charge in AI, digital and data, brought together a team of Absa’s women leadership to speak about the impact of AI and how their teams are at the forefront of the bank’s digital transformation.
During a discussion, Christine Wu, interim co-chief executive for personal and private banking, explained that women are the ones bringing empathy and customer-centricity to banking while leveraging AI tools.
“They bring the nurturing, the care. All businesses can build datasets and be efficient (we’ve been equalised through such tools), but what’s important is interpreting the data and bringing the empathy, and how you use that data to engage with customers for their benefit.”
Khanyisa Mhlaba, executive information officer at Absa, explained it is women who lead the human-centric charge that customers and employees need in the age of AI.
“Our tech team is going to the frontline colleagues to determine what AI means to them and how it can help them or be used by them. The first shift was to always be empathic to the people most concerned by AI and help them navigate this transition. We have to be clear and define how we’re playing in this space.
“Women are at the forefront of setting these boundaries. We’re also the ones testing the tools at Absa, and making sure they function correctly for our customers,” Mhlaba said.
A live demo at the event demonstrated the future of Abby’s agentic capabilities, transforming from a large-language model-based assistant, to an autonomous agent that anticipates client needs.
Absa noted that through agentic AI technology, the new tool would be able to handle tasks simultaneously through parallel processing, such as determining a user’s eligibility for a home loan, while checking balances and savings goals.
It could provide collaborative task management using multiple datasets and policy documents across Absa’s servers to determine outputs, and perform multistep tasks with less user interaction (such as offering advice on large purchases.
The bank notes that the demonstration offered a glimpse into what’s next for Absa’s intelligent servicing capabilities and paving the way for adaptive, self-improving systems.
