United Bank for Africa (UBA Group) kicked off the first session of the week-long Social Media Week Lagos 2019 with the announcement that its chatbot, Leo, now covers 17 African countries and has one million subscribers.
Leo was launched in January 2018 to enable customers of the bank have access to select banking services including account opening, loan applications, account balance checking, cheque confirmations, bill payment, account freezing and instant notifications.
UBA managing director, Kennedy Uzoka, said at the unveiling of the chatbot in 2018, “The formulation of this product is consistent with the bank’s customer first philosophy, where we are doing things not the way we like, but focusing on what the customer want, where they want it and in the exact platform they want it.”
The bank’s head of online banking, Augustine Abolusoro, in a presentation titled “Game of Bots” at Social Media Week 2019, disclosed that Leo is not just the first artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbot in Africa; it is also a multi-lingual chatbot with the capability to speak English, French, and Portuguese.
Yoruba and other Nigerian languages will be included soon.
Mr Abolusoro added that everything learnt over the last one year of Leo’s work will help UBA improve on its digital offerings.
Five per cent of the subscriber population is within the age of 65 and above, while 72 per cent are between 18 and 34 years.
“The Leo platform has the same kind of authentication you find on all our digital platforms,” Abolusoro said.
