LEO (UBA CHAT BANKING) Qorus Banking Innovation Awards 2018

Concept and objectives: UBA Chatbanking (Leo) is AI ChatBot developed to provide Banking Services on Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp. The concept is based on the fact that over 200m Africans are on Facebook (FB) and there are still millions of such Africans who are still financially excluded. So, partnership with FB is to drive financial inclusion The main objectives of Leo are to drive financial inclusion and to make banking services available to social media users. Reasons Behind: • Drive for financial inclusion – The introduction of 3-tiered KYC by the Central Bank of Nigeria allows for opening account with minimal documentation and this is what makes it online account opening. • Cost-Effectiveness – The FB Messenger’s platform with billions of existing users, provides a veritable platform for UBA to acquire new customers in cost-effective manner • Changing Customer Preference – The Millennials represent the largest proportion of the African population. With the Millennials, banking in the brick-and-mortal is old-fashioned, banking on the mobile is boring but banking on social media is cool! State of Competition: UBA ChatBanking (Leo) is the 1st of its kind in Africa. It was the only AI Bot acknowledged by Mark Zuckerberg during his 2018 F8 key note address. Sources of Inspiration: The Bank’s desire to always put the customer first in its offering. So, this innovation is perceived as long yearning of our customers. Departments Involved: UBA’s Online Banking & IT development Teams Main results so far: Multi-Lingual (English, French and Portuguese), Multi-Country and has over one-half million registered users with over 5m messages monthly.