Bradesco and IBM transform the service of millions of users with BIA

BIA (Bradesco Artificial Intelligence) has hit the mark of 87 million interactions with current and potential bank employees and customers since its implementation in 2016. The expectation is to reach 100 million by March. Using Watson Discovery – IBM’s Watson Assistant –, among other components of the solution, BIA takes up to 3 seconds to ask questions and perform various services such as balance and extract queries, transfers, account payments, investments, mobile phone recharges, and other transactions.

About 9 million customers have already used BIA artificial intelligence. In 2018, 78,000 new accounts were opened via BIA. BIA answers more than 200,000 questions about more than 59 Bradesco products and automatically detects biases when the systems are running.

One of the most frequently asked questions for the BIA was “How to register the Token on my cell phone?”. Another recurring question is about the opening of accounts. “When we started our digital reinvention journey, we had a great challenge, both to break paradigms and to provide a Portuguese-speaking solution which understands the country’s culture, the accent, and the construction of questions. Now we want to maintain and increase the relevance of BIA in people’s lives,” says Luca Cavalcanti, Executive Director of Bradesco. “Our partnership with Bradesco is a great example of how innovation and technology are improving the experience of millions of people in Brazil,” says IBM Brazil president Tonny Martins.

The history of BIA merges with that of IBM Watson in Brazil. In 2016, Bradesco was the first company in the country to train the system in the Portuguese language so that it could interact, in natural language, with bank employees and help them in their daily activities.