Singapores OCBC Bank Establishes Artificial Intelligence Unit

Singapore-based OCBC Bank has established an artificial intelligence (AI) unit, as part of its efforts to advance the use of AI across banking services.

The company has established the new unit, AI Lab@TOV, to strategically develop in-house AI capabilities.

The bank will initially provide $10m in three years for the new AI unit, which will be led by Singaporean Ken Wong.

The three data scientists, under the leadership of Ken Wong, will work to advance the adoption of AI across banking services such as wealth advisory and loans financing.

Part of the OCBC Bank’s Fintech and Innovation Group, the AI unit will serve as a test bed for all new AI technologies.

The unit will also show the feasibility of new technology before it is incorporated into the bank’s existing systems.

Through using bank’s data sandbox and application programme interfaces (APIs), the unit will experiment with real-life anonymous customer data in a secure environment and generate proofs-of-concept that can be rapidly tested.

The AI unit is experimenting with natural language and speech processing technologies to develop developing AI technology that can recognise and understand local accents accurately.

In addition, AI Lab@TOV will work with Amazon Web Services (AWS) DeepLens, claimed to be the world’s first deep learning video camera for developers.

Deep learning is a machine learning technique, which uses neural networks to learn and make predictions.

AI Lab@TOV head Ken Wong said: “With the set-up of our very own AI lab, we are able to experiment for the first time with deep learning neural networks and graphics processing units, which are heavily used in the gaming industry and hardly used in banking.

“This is an exciting new space to be in, especially for banking, and we welcome talent who have the passion to develop something new and fresh for the industry.”

Image: OCBC Bank’s new AI unit sits within The Open Vault at OCBC. Photo: courtesy of OCBC Bank.