Artificial intelligence paves the way for the bank of the future. The winner of the first edition of Digital Factory, the Open Innovation initiative promoted by CA Auto Bank in collaboration with I3P, was won by the young companies : Stip , with its Artificial Intelligence solution that allows improving customer service performance reducing costs and complaint management times, and Virtual B, with its system for analyzing and understanding customers' real financial needs and identifying personalized solutions.
After two selection phases, CA Auto Bank and I3P elected the four finalist startups and on Friday 5 March, at the end of an online event with the pitch sessions of the candidate projects, they finally chose the winning companies, awarded in the presence of Giacomo Carelli, CEO & General Manager of the CA Auto Bank group, and Giuseppe Scellato, President of I3P. At the conclusion of the round table evaluating the proposed projects, the Digital Factory jury chose to reward two startups ex aequo, rather than one, for the validity of the projects presented.
As winners of the Digital Factory call, Stip and Virtual B will receive the resources from CA Auto Bank to develop a Proof-of-Concept (PoC), in order to test and demonstrate the validity of the ideas presented in the field, thus working closely together with the group's subsidiaries.
The projects
The goal of Stip is not to eliminate the need for customer service agents, unlike a normal chatbot, but to maximize its efficiency. Stip, in fact, applies AI to the entire digital customer service process to support operators, allowing them to focus solely on resolving specific problems, while the AI system automates "non-value added" activities such as content moderation and automatic collection of the information necessary to manage each request.
Founded in 2010 in Milan and a pioneer of fintech in Italy, Virtual B is a data analytics company specializing in machine learning, artificial intelligence and investment strategy for banks and insurance companies. In particular, it proposes a solution which, through the analysis of both corporate and external data, allows financial institutions to move to a data-driven sales process through the financial profiling of the customer. Finally, the system offers the customization of products and communication, respecting the characteristics of each identified customer cluster.
Also competing in the final phase of Digital Factory were Lokky, a startup that has developed a white-label solution for the profiling and analysis of the insurance needs of business customers, and BigProfiles, with an Artificial Intelligence platform for marketing and sales designed to reduce the operating costs of marketing campaigns and improve their conversion rates.
The initiative
Launched with the aim of identifying new solutions and technologies that can contribute to the digital transformation of CA Auto Bank, the Digital Factory call was a great success: in the six weeks made available to participate in the call, numerous applications were received not only from all over Italy, but also from the rest of Europe and from overseas.
“We are very satisfied with the success of this initiative in collaboration with CA Auto Bank,” commented Giuseppe Scellato, President of I3P. “With Digital Factory we have started an Open Innovation program dedicated to bringing innovative technological exploration projects to large companies that are leaders in their sectors. We are certain that this synergy will have important implications in the future and as an incubator we are ready to promote further open innovation actions, to bring out the demand for new technologies and to offer the answer with the structuring and validation of startup projects".
Inserted within the "Start&Pulse" program of Crédit Agricole Consumer Finance, the Digital Factory project constituted a new step in the digital transformation path started by the CA Auto Bank group, oriented towards innovation in the entire banking sector. In a constantly evolving world, the search for new innovative and cutting-edge solutions has become of fundamental importance for the bank itself: projects such as the Digital Factory allow this process to be accelerated through new links with the ecosystem of startups and SMEs.
