[ M A R K E T
named its chatbot around this notion of continuous improve-
ment. Sam the Pantomath refers to an individual or being that
is all-knowing but also has a quest to learn more. The custodian
bank has put a lot of thought and research into its chatbot, from
a gender-neutral name to having entirely customisable appear-
ance features.
The chatbot is being tested internally with around 2,500 users
from its technology and operations team.
“Securities services is actually pioneering on behalf of the
bank,” explains Margaret Harwood-Jones, global head of secu-
rities services at Standard Chartered. “We have used a process
called stemming to dive down into the commonality of words
from all the questions that we ask each other in the day-to-day
processing of transactions and using that information with the
application of artificial intelligence we are able to answer our
teams internally using this new tool.
“Typically for the majority of our query resolution we had to
allow ourselves up to four hours in the SLA to interrogate the
organisation and to get back to the client; now we are answering
those queries in less than four minutes.”
From four hours to four minutes is an incredible time reduc-
tion, showing just why the bank is pouring so much time and ef-
fort into the initiative, from working with behavioural scientists
to internal testing.
In the Drift report, respondents stated the top three benefits
they would look for from these services would be 24-hour ser-
vice, getting instant responses and answers to simple questions
– exactly what custodian banks are looking to do with their
chatbots.
Deutsche Bank is another to have developed a chatbot within
its securities services division. ‘Debbie’ was launched in June
2018 and, like Standard Chartered, has seen response times
transition from hours to minutes. As an example, Deutsche Bank
said it can respond to trade status updates, even in batches, in
real-time as opposed to the hours it once took.
Deutsche’s initiative has a great origin story as well as Jeslyn
Tan, global head of product management for securities services
at Deutsche Bank, explains to Global Custodian. The custodian’s
chatbot was built on a joint proof-of-concept with BNY Mel-
lon’s Singapore Innovation Centre, responding to the challenges
client queries.
Subsequently, the project ended up with BNY Mellon and
Deutsche Bank integrating chatbots built on the Symphony mes-
saging platform, for transactions on the Hong Kong exchange.
R E V I E W
|
C H AT B O T S ]
The chatbot-to-chatbot communication
solution will replace manual responses
to status enquiries on their securities
trades. With a lot of talk about collabo-
ration within securities services, this is
a real-life example of something coming
to fruition, and the speed and time-to-
market has been incredibly fast by the
industry’s standards. The partnership
also signals how banks are now more
open to collaboration with one another to
enhance non-differential processes in the
middle- and back-office.
As a sub-custodian, Deutsche Bank
delivers a number of products to the
global custodian’s end-client. “If we could
“Securities services is actually pioneering on
behalf of the bank.”
MARGARET HARWOOD-JONES, GLOBAL HEAD OF
SECURITIES SERVICES, STANDARD CHARTERED
partner with them, they would then be
able to use the data we deliver to them to
improve their service to their client, while
at the same time reducing the number of
client queries that require manual inter-
vention,” says Tan.
The project is built around the Sym-
phony enterprise collaboration platform
which is provided to the end-client by the
global custodian.
“We are developing chatbots to deliver
data from DB that is normally requested
by phone straight into our client’s system
from where it can be fed to their client
without manual intermediation,” says
Tan. “The end-client will see a much
faster turnaround time to their queries,
particularly near cut-off time when
trade status updates are essential to help
them manage their settlement processes.
Winter 2018
globalcustodian.com
53