Digital transformation at Bradesco: Optimizing operational efficiency with Generative AI Qorus-Infosys Finacle Banking Innovation Awards 2024 - Winner

Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as one of today's most promising disruptive innovations, evolving to support a range of applications including credit decisions and scenario forecasting. Generative AI (GenAI), a more recent development, has gained prominence by transforming the way we interact with technology. Its capacity to automate tasks, personalize services, and generate valuable insights can bring considerable benefits, including increased competitiveness and, above all, enhanced operational efficiency.

We have been utilising AI in our financial operations and interactions with the public for a number of years. Of particular note is BIA, our cognitive assistant, which has already conducted over two billion interactions with customers. In our ongoing quest for continuous improvement, we have identified significant opportunities for enhancement across various areas of the organization. Recently, generative AI has emerged as a transformative element with the potential to revolutionize these operations, automate processes, improve analysis and strategic decisions, and raise operational efficiency to new heights. By leveraging this technology, we are poised to usher in a future of innovation and excellence in customer service.

To ensure our services meet the highest standards of excellence, we have developed a GenAI platform structured around four key pillars: 1. People and Culture: Training and knowledge for employees to identify and execute opportunities in their businesses independently and democratically. 2. Governance and Processes: Ensuring ethical handling of initiatives in line with our mission and values. 3. Partnerships: Collaborating with universities, suppliers, technology companies, etc. to expand knowledge, applications, and market leadership. 4. Core Technology: Providing modern, scalable, and reusable infrastructure for our businesses and applications.

The People and Culture pillar is designed to guarantee that all personnel have the capacity to utilize, propose, and develop solutions with GenAI. To this end, we conduct training and hackathons in close collaboration with each business area, modifying the training process to align with the technical and business requirements of each team. This approach ensures that all employees have the knowledge and skills to develop, optimize, and utilize this technology to its fullest potential. We have already implemented several initiatives in this regard.

● Initiative 1: "Ideathon," spearheaded by the Data Intelligence, IT, and InovaBra teams from Bradesco's innovation ecosystem, aims to expand the Product, Segment, and Backoffice areas' capabilities and identify potential applications within the bank. To this end, technical and digital product development mentoring was conducted with the objective of identifying opportunities, relevance, and added value, as well as stimulating trends and the market with technology for the business areas. A total of 63 initiatives were proposed by 37 businesses areas. Of these, 11 were approved and 5 projects were selected for pilot testing with the technology. The selected projects for large-scale experimentation include: o Judicial Demands and Obligations | Office Responsibilities: We provide fast, efficient, and personalized service, absorbing large volumes of interactions to interpret judicial orders in the business operations area. o We also assist with consortium sales: The digital consortium sales platform offers an assisted and resolutive experience for relationship managers and clients, providing clarity on contractual matters and presenting optimal contracting options within the consortium framework. o Customer Relations: The application of technology in the Cards area enables more assertive responses to customer queries, minimising failures and enhancing the effectiveness of the service, without the need for integration with other systems. o In the case of legal proceedings, we act on the root cause: The objective is to issue legal opinions with greater assertiveness and agility, while ensuring precision. To achieve this, we are leveraging Generative AI to improve the interpretation and consolidation of court orders based on documents and images.

● Initiative 2: Organize hackathons with business areas. A series of training sessions with partner departments, including Data Intelligence, Credit and Investments, will be conducted to facilitate a continuous training process with our partners, culminating in hackathon events. These events provide training in key areas of the organization and generate valuable business insights. Notable achievements include: o Improving the Bradesco Expresso journey - Image summarization/description for prospecting correspondent banking establishments (corban). o Credit Card Service - Use of Generative AI to analyze customer complaints about debit and credit card products and contact them via digital channels for a solution. o Agribusiness Support - Virtual Assistant to help with agribusiness queries customized for farmers.

● Initiative 3: Learning Paths - The programme includes structured, hands-on training days and knowledge pills. It is essential to guarantee the transfer and training of all organizational levels, from technology to business, and from the operational to the executive.

In order to ensure effective Governance and processes, a framework has been established to oversee and monitor new initiatives. The framework requires that all new GenAI demands be submitted and evaluated according to established criteria, including safety, risk, complexity, and business value. This approach ensures that the most impactful solutions are given priority, that an ethical approach is taken to the use of GenAI in each case, and that these applications are monitored throughout their life cycle.

The Partnerships pillar is responsible for ensuring the development, maintenance, and implementation of best practices for the Generative AI platform. This pillar facilitates the generation of research and development in collaboration with academic institutions, thereby fostering and stimulating innovations within the field of generative AI and its associated ecosystem. Furthermore, this pillar encompasses the ongoing testing and experimentation with partner companies that develop solutions with or for GenAI. By leveraging these insights, we are able to drive digital transformation and maintain technological progress, ensuring that we remain at the forefront of the market and at the cutting edge of technology.

Finally, the Core-Technology pillar is a structure designed to guarantee an environment capable of offering business teams complete solutions for using Generative AI. This pillar entails the design of an architectural framework that transcends business silos, thereby ensuring scalability and traction for business demands. This pillar also establishes a system that can orchestrate demand and create solutions through integration, without relying on new AI developments. Furthermore, it is able to effectively control access security, including sensitive and financial data, with costs organized by project in a transparent manner to the developer.

The aforementioned projects were completed using a platform developed in-house with the primary GenAI capabilities (text extraction and generation, summarization, classification, and question-and-answer), which leverages the most effective techniques from each of the pillars and allows the database to be utilized in a range of scenarios across diverse domains, enhancing efficiency and quality without the need for additional development. Some reference cases for this platform are: ● BIA Clients: The implementation of Generative AI for BIA (Bradesco Artificial Intelligence) will enable us to leverage services in the various Bradesco channels for customers and non-customers, thereby increasing efficiency in service. One of the main objectives is to allow customers to self-service, enabling them to ask questions about processes, product contracting, network availability, rates charged, and other matters. ● BIA Tech: It will leverage GenAI to create standardized source code and apply consistent rules, ensuring that the code is readable, cohesive, and follows best practices. Furthermore, BIA Tech will facilitate the continuous deployment process (CI/CD), in accordance with DevOps standards, and will oversee project monitoring and documentation. ● Copilot: This is a virtual decision-making assistant that comprehends user inquiries and responds based on Open Finance data, eliminating the necessity for manual processes or scripts. Copilot is able to comprehend pertinent tenders for the Bank, identify pertinent topics from the notice, and forward them to the appropriate area for evaluation of participation. ● The Assistant provides internal procedural and technical content on Cloud at Bradesco.