Innovation

The innovation lies in the creation of AI-powered assistants that help clients navigate the bank's ecosystem, enhancing their user experience by making it more convenient and secure. These assistants simplify life and help solve everyday tasks. They include assistants for investments, shopping, a personal assistant for answering calls, and a children's assistant that supports learning. These AI assistants are integrated into various bank products, offering personalized support tailored to individual needs and solving specific tasks for each client.

The investment assistant helps clients build an investment portfolio and provides guidance on using their personal accounts. The personal secretary answers calls and protects clients from fraudsters. The children’s assistant communicates in a language understandable to children, helping them complete homework while encouraging learning rather than simply providing answers.

These assistants were made possible by the bank's own AI Center, which brings together scientists and developers. The creation of this innovation involved a specialized team focused on artificial intelligence and AI-based solutions. This team includes scientists developing new AI models, a development team building AI-driven products, and managers and product owners who set the direction for product development and oversee the process.

Viktor Tarnavskiy is responsible for team selection, strategic planning, team management, and product development direction. Under his leadership, the team has developed and implemented AI-powered assistants across various bank products, including investments, children's assistants, and personal assistants.

Viktor noted that "We are currently repositioning ourselves as not just a bank, but an ecosystem. We are creating an ecosystem centered around the individual. Our goal is to build such an excellent ecosystem around a person that all their tasks are solved as conveniently, quickly, and beneficially as possible for them."

This innovation aligns closely with the bank's mission of creating a human-centric ecosystem. It aims to improve people’s lives through accessible and convenient solutions for everyday tasks. Additionally, the bank fulfills a social mission by ensuring its products and developments are accessible to a wide audience.

He claimed "We are developing a set of assistants for the company's products. These are assistants integrated into the products, helping people solve tasks within them. For example, if it’s about investments, the assistant helps users understand investments, purchase assets, figure out how to properly build a portfolio for profitable investments, and so on. The children’s assistant, used by kids, helps with homework and provides guidance on progressing in their education. It doesn’t solve tasks for the child but instead helps them learn and master the material themselves. We designed it to communicate in a way that children can easily understand."

Inspiration

While exploring user experience, the bank's team discovered that the products people currently use are not sufficiently convenient. The bank recognizes the need to change and become closer to people. T-Bank has always been known for creating digital products that are more advanced and innovative than others. Now, to develop even more user-friendly, advanced, and innovative products, they must be built on the foundation of artificial intelligence. This has led to the idea of creating AI-based assistants within the bank's products. These assistants will help users by quickly answering their questions and communicating with them in a language they understand.

T-Bank, with its strong team and proprietary AI developments, aims to provide people with access to these technologies. This allows users to fully benefit from the bank's ecosystem products while saving as much time as possible. Furthermore, the security of clients is a top priority. The personal assistant will not only respond to missed calls from friends or relatives but will also protect users from fraud. By recognizing fraud conversation patterns, the assistant can independently engage with the scammer, preventing fraud attempts and occupying the scammer's time, reducing their ability to deceive others. Our children's assistant is highly effective in supporting education. It does not simply provide answers but helps children understand how to solve problems independently, communicating in a language that is clear and accessible to them.

In addition to developing proprietary products, T-Bank actively creates and shares open AI solutions, contributing to the growth of the entire industry. We also focus on educating students and schoolchildren, as we believe this is an important social mission.

While describing the key inspiration Viktor also mentioned that "T-Bank has always been known for creating the best products. The digital products we develop have always stood out for being more advanced and innovative. This is why people have always appreciated us, and we continue this tradition. Today, to create more user-friendly, advanced, and innovative products, you must build them on the foundation of artificial intelligence. Accordingly, we are directly targeting this goal through our technologies and products."

Overall impact

The innovation has significantly increased the bank's operational efficiency and improved the quality of its products. Viktor Tarnavsky highlighted that, thanks to the implementation of artificial intelligence, the bank’s ecosystem has become more convenient for customers, while the business has achieved significant financial results. For instance, assistants that help users manage investments and protect themselves from fraud enhance the user experience and build trust in the bank. This contributes to expanding the customer base and increasing user engagement with the bank's products. The measurable financial impact of these innovations reaches approximately 10 billion rubles.

Artificial intelligence addresses issues related to educational and financial inequality. For example, children’s assistants help students learn, solve problems, and develop critical thinking skills. The bank’s products also promote financial literacy, protect users from fraudulent activities, and help people manage their finances more effectively. The bank’s educational initiatives and development of open-source products make a significant contribution to the advancement of AI technologies and the AI-focused community.

As a digital company, the bank has a minimal carbon footprint. However, its innovations indirectly reduce environmental impact by increasing resource efficiency and minimizing excessive costs. The bank's support for the development of open-source technologies also promotes more efficient resource use in other companies.

In the short term, the innovation has improved the user experience and enabled the introduction of new products, such as AI-powered assistants, which have quickly added value for customers. In the long term, the bank plans to build a future ecosystem that integrates AI products to address a wide range of tasks and support sustainable development.

The financial impact of implementing AI is measured in billions of rubles, which is a direct indicator of success.The bank has launched free products, such as the children’s assistant, which helps kids learn and is accessible to everyone without exception. Open-source tools developed by the bank demonstrate high performance and are freely available.

Viktor supported that "We measure the business impact of artificial intelligence in billions of rubles, significantly exceeding 1-2 billion and closer to 10 billion rubles.”

Business benefit

The innovation has brought significant benefits to the bank by increasing operational efficiency and offering higher-quality products and an improved user experience for its clients. The implementation of assistants and other AI solutions has strengthened customer trust through convenience, personalization, and risk protection. The financial impact of deploying artificial intelligence is measured in billions of rubles, demonstrating a high return on investment.

Investments in education, such as establishing university departments and hosting school competitions, enhance the company’s prestige and help train talented workers, which is crucial in a labor market with a shortage of skilled professionals.

Social and environmental benefit

Innovation has a positive impact on society by providing access to educational and financial tools for a wide range of users. AI assistants help children overcome learning challenges. The assistance provided by these AI tools when using the bank's products makes them accessible to a broader audience, reducing inequality.

Additionally, the bank actively supports projects aimed at improving financial literacy and protecting users from fraud. From an environmental perspective, the bank's digital model minimizes its carbon footprint. 

The development of open-source technologies contri5butes to the advancement of the AI industry and makes it more accessible to companies across various sectors, enabling them to operate more efficiently.

Interview

Victor Tarnavsky, CEO AI Center