NatWest's Cora chatbot gets a (12-week) Generative AI update
NatWest Bank in the UK have long been leaders in the chatbot and conversational AI space – way before many other banks had even thought about 'chat' as an interface.
The bank has been investing for, I think it's fair to say, almost a decade (at my informal reckoning) in chatbot technology, more recently known as Conversational AI.
Sensibly, the NatWest team decided early on giving these efforts a name - Cora. Not only was it humanising, it's much nicer to refer to 'Cora' rather than 'the bot' or 'the virtual assistant' or 'that chat thing'.
Many careers have spawned from Cora and it has been fantastic watching from afar as the teams continue to innovate the offering.
NatWest's Cora is certainly one of the United Kingdom's largest conversational AI implementations, handling around 11M conversations per year in 2023. That same figure was 5M conversations a year in 2019, so I wouldn't be surprised if the full-year figure for 2024 would reach 20M.
The 12-week Trial
Developed by Liveperson (so reports Chatbotguide.org) and using IBM Watson as the underlying AI engine, the NatWest and IBM teams are running a 12-week trial of Cora+, or Cora with added Generative AI goodness. You can read all about NatWest's approach here.
Generative AI itself is a huge issue for financial services. Indeed, the phrase is essentially a 'third rail' in many institutions. Step on it - or whisper the words - in a financial institution and you're likely to get shown the door very, very quickly.
In financial services, you absolutely can't have any hallucinations when it comes to managing discussions with customers. We can't have the chatbot making up policies (hello Air Canada) or deciding to use expletives when dealing with customers (hello DPD).
Financial Services also doesn't have any patience for Generative AI fanatics insisting that hallucinations are a feature.
Yes, they are a feature of Generative AI. We don't want it making up loan policies though.
Using Generative AI in a Financial Services setting is possible. It's about using it in the right way. This, for example, is something that the team at boost.ai have done rather effectively. Instead of having to manually write every single intent process for your Conversational AI, you can use Generative AI to do a lot of that heavy lifting. You can also integrate it into some conversation flows.
Here's one example of how NatWest is testing Generative AI with Cora:
With generative AI, customers can ask questions and receive responses in a more natural, human style and are provided with links to requested information, which they can either view immediately or bookmark for later.
Previously, when a customer asked Cora about a mortgage or lending product, a link would be provided to a general page which would require a customer to research and scroll through different options.
Now, Cora+ will be able to understand the context and nuances of each query to provide more accurate and personalised responses for certain journeys.
The operative key there is 'certain journeys'. Not all journeys are likely to be suitable for this approach yet, especially whilst the technology is still being tested.
The other key use case is using Generative AI to rapidly summarise the existing conversation between a customer and Cora so that a human agent can quickly establish the status when Cora is handing off to them. That's a good idea - and a great use case. If there are any unpredictable results, it's not necessarily going to impact customers – but it should certainly help the human agents.
Testing In The Wild
I think it's deeply impressive that the team at NatWest are showing such strong innovative leadership here. It would be very easy to keep running proof-of-concepts in the background - it's only when you test with actual customers can really start learning. This is why NatWest are testing their Generative AI additions 'in the wild'.
I think it's fair to say that many bank executives would absolutely balk at authorising such an approach. The fact that NatWest is doing so (in a careful, measured manner) indicates strong leadership, strong confidence and a good understanding of the technology. Very impressive, NatWest.
Do read the Cora+ GenAI announcement on NatWest's news & insights page and I'd suggest checking back regularly to see how things are doing. I hope they'll do a summary of their results after the 12-week trial finishes.
Here are some key people at NatWest to follow and connect with if you've got questions about Cora:
Zachery Anderson is Chief Data & Analytics Officer at NatWest:
Zachery Anderson
Wendy Redshaw is Chief Digital Officer at NatWest:
Finally: Just in case you missed it, I recently produced a head-to-head between NatWest's Cora and Lloyds Bank's Virtual Assistant.
