How banks in Bulgaria use artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence started to enter the Bulgarian banking sector a few years ago, and its most obvious areas of application are in process and sales optimization, customer service and risk assessment.

With subsequent breakthroughs in the development of the technology, its use in Bulgarian banks has deepened and expanded. So today, AI is not only helping to create increasingly intuitive digital assistants, but also to perform activities such as analysing how customers repay their loans and manage their finances.

Such innovations save employees time in the full knowledge that the banking sector has in recent years become another one with staff shortages and retention issues. Banks are therefore continuing to invest in new technologies and

artificial intelligence will not replace people, but people using artificial intelligence will replace them," said UniCredit Bulbank CEO Tsvetanka Mincheva during the Financial Forum "Innovations".

A similar view is shared by tbi bank CEO Peter Baron, who said

artificial intelligence will not replace humans, but will empower them and give them more opportunities".

And according to Tatiana Ivanova, member of the Management Board of UBB and innovation leader of KBC Group in Bulgaria, the combination of technology and people

is at the heart of any successful innovation".

For Investbank, it is important for artificial intelligence to enter the bank's internal processes, increase efficiency and optimize them so that

to make the profession there more attractive for young people," said CEO Svetoslav Milanov.

The assistants with female names

Digital assistants of banks in Bulgaria, based on AI technologies, began to enter in 2022 with characteristic female names, the ability to communicate on multiple topics and solve some of the customer problems. By today, they have become an integral part of banks' customer service operations, and financial institutions are building on them by developing them to work with businesses, analyze their queries and improve their autonomy and ability to respond without employee intervention.

Communication from physical channels will gradually move to AI-based assistants. They are available 24/7, they don't get sick, they don't take time off, they give personalized consultations, they save time visiting a branch," explained Tatiana Ivanova.

She hopes assistants will become more understandable to the audience and banking institutions' communications with customers will shift from physical channels to technology-based centres.

And other applications

Artificial intelligence has also been used to analyze borrower behavior after a loan is made. This is being done at one of the smaller banks on the Bulgarian market, Allianz Bank Bulgaria.

The model is not used for loan approval, but it is turned on and used three months after granting and collects information," explained Allianz Bank Bulgaria CEO Georgi Zamanov.

The lessons learned from the model are then applied to more restrictive parameters for the largest loans.

Artificial intelligence also comes into play as a manager that can manage investment funds, albeit with mandatory human oversight at this stage.

And for all its benefits, artificial intelligence is already being recognised by banks in Bulgaria,

the technology has some way to evolve," Mincheva believes, and "competition and market change causes you to look for ways to be competitive."

And the director of Postbank Dimitar Shumarov pointed out that at this stage banks must necessarily control processes involving artificial intelligence because of the reputation and trust they have built in people.

This article was translated with the support of DeepL.