Rab Govil, CEO and founder of Naehas, joins the Leaders channel to explore the next generation of offer management solutions in financial services. With rising customer expectations and increasing costs of acquisition, hyper-personalization is no longer a competitive advantage – it's table stakes. Learn how Tier 1 and 2 banks are using dynamic, cloud-based automation and AI solutions to deliver the right offer, to the right customer, at the right time, while staying compliant and accelerating time to market strategies.
This strategic conversation covers:
- How AI and automation can accelerate hyper-personalized offer execution
- Real-world success stories from leading banks
- The biggest obstacles to offer management and how to overcome them
- Why cloud-based solutions can deliver faster time to market
- How to get started in untangling your existing pricing and offer management systems
Transcription:
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio for the authoritative record.
Michael Moeser (00:10):
Greetings everyone. I'm Michael Moeser with American Banker and I'll be your host. In today's session, can AI and offer workflow automation, power next level customer relationships? Today we'll be talking about creating hyper personalized bank relationships fueled by AI powered solutions, which are both data-driven and cloud-based. Joining me today is Rab Govil, CEO, and founder of the FinTech Naehas. Before we start, let me do a quick introduction for Rab. He's a serial entrepreneur with many startups, both profitable businesses and charities. He was once interviewed at an industry event and was asked if he were ever to go back to his alma mater of Rochester Institute of Technology and teach a course, what would it be called and what three books would he nominate as required reading for his students? The course title, and I quote here, your parents don't want you to be an entrepreneur, but you're going to do it anyway. Sounds like my kids. The books he mentioned were hiring winners by Richard Pinker, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, great book about innovation and the Lean Startup by Eric Rise. Welcome Rab.
Rab Govil (01:17):
Thank you. Thank you for having me here at American Banker and I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
Michael Moeser (01:24):
Well, let's start with the books that you mentioned, and I want to highlight the very first one, hiring winners. So why did that come up? Why is it so, why do you feel that it's important for entrepreneurs, for people in the corporate world?
Rab Govil (01:39):
I think it kind of goes back to the original statement you made about me teaching that course about your parents wouldn't want you to be entrepreneurs, but you're going to do it anyways. And I think fundamentally the reason I made that statement was is building a business is so incredibly hard that you want to build a team that can support you through this journey. It is just, I tell people there's a reason that such few businesses really succeed, and part of the reason businesses do not succeed is because they have not built the team around them. But learning how to choose the people you either co-found the business with are the people you initially hire within your organization is such a critical skillset and nobody teaches it, right? Maybe
Michael Moeser (02:47):
If your course were in
Rab Govil (02:48):
Play, but nobody teaches it. And I'm just kind of fascinated by the fact that this is such an important decision for every business, and most folks learn it through experience or through just hard knocks, right? They make so many mistakes along the way. So I went around the whole path of figuring out there's got to be a process, there has to be a process to hiring. And today, the truth there is, and hiring Fins was one of the books, and there's another similar book called Who, which kind of falls into the same category that actually describes a reasonable process. And the process initially starts with just really defining who you want to hire, who you want to hire, what are the characteristics that are important to you, what are the characteristics that are not important to you, what type of culture you want this person to have, and debating it among the people who are important. And it's fascinating, we do this as an exercise now in my companies. It's like everybody has to write what is called an IEP, the Ideal Employee Profile. And we debated, and it's fascinating is the debate might go for an hour to two hours, and people who walked into the debate in the beginning of the conversation walk away by the end of the conversation looking for a completely different person. So that just shows that everybody has their own perspective and their own rose color glasses. So I think that's a great book. And the book who, so that's the reason I feel that people learning how to do that is critical.
Michael Moeser (04:23):
Now, the listeners, the viewers of today's session, they're not probably going to be starting their own entrepreneurial ventures, but they're probably going to be leading projects or reinvigorating old ones. And the idea of hiring winners is not just the employees, but it also extends to the partners that they work with.
Rab Govil (04:44):
Absolutely. In fact, I mean, my belief is that extends to the relationships you have, the personal relationships choosing, deciding who you really want to work with because I mean, time that we have is such a limited quantity. I always say that it's the only democratically distributed quantity in the whole world. The president of the United States has still has 24 hours, just like I have 24 hours. So using the time effectively and part of using the time effectively comes down to the people you choose to work with, either internally or externally. And I agree, the idea of finding the right team to work with or putting the right team in, the people doesn't have to apply to an entrepreneurial journey. It can apply to any project. The only reason I make it a big deal about entrepreneurial journey is most of the time you're getting married with this person. Generally it's a five to seven year journey. Some projects only last like three to six months. It's like dating. So it can be a little bit.
Michael Moeser (05:45):
Now talk to me as we're going to get into the workflow optimization and ai, but talk to me about Neha S how it started, the mission, and actually where the name came from. Let's start with the name.
Rab Govil (05:57):
That's the most, okay, well, I'm a proud dad. The name is named after my daughter, Neha.
Michael Moeser (06:05):
And what does Neha mean?
Rab Govil (06:07):
So Neha actually means rain or affectionate depending on what nuances of the language you're understanding in Hindi. And so the company itself now is almost 15 years old. She now works in New York, graduated proud dad, graduated from MIT, she's working for a hedge fund here in New York. But at that time when she was almost, what, eight years old?
Michael Moeser (06:33):
Okay.
Rab Govil (06:35):
One side named the company, and I'll tell you the whole story around it. She, for the longest time felt she was on the board of the company, was her company. So every time I would come, she would kind of ask me question that, how's it going to chase? Did you get that customer? Did you not get that customer? So I felt that I had a constant board. There was a lot of fun kind of talking to her about those things. It was a good set of bonding moment. But the idea behind the company started off with, the fundamental belief I had is that financial institutions matter. They matter in a very significant way in the lives of a country, in the lives of individuals, and a lot of people don't value it as much, but if you just look at stats, statistics of countries that have a well-developed financial system and countries that have not a well-developed financial system, and you'll find enormous difference in quality of life because financial systems allow you to do things, buy houses, send your kids to college.
(07:46):
I mean, all sorts of good things happen because you have a well dwell of financial systems. However, banks and other financial institutions, since they're dealing with people's money, have to treat it with the level of just under a set of regulations and the systems can go down. People always want access to money. The bar is super, super high when you're really, yeah, it's precious. I completely get that. It is precious to be able to do that. And what we came to the realization that they didn't have access to the right modern technology to really help build stronger customer relationships.
Michael Moeser (08:44):
So talk to us about that in terms of that, the offer opportunity going into the customer relationships, banks want to create that relationship with their existing customers, hopefully create new ones. So how did Neha see and maybe quantify what is that opportunity that you're talking about that offers building that relationship?
Rab Govil (09:05):
It's fascinating. Even after working after so many years, we are still just scratching the surface. The business has grown pretty large, but we're still scratching the surface of this opportunity. So just to give you a feeling, and a lot of your readers might already do this because almost all your readers and audiences also consumer,
(09:30):
You get all these offers from institutions who say, Hey, open a deposit account or open a credit card, and if you open a credit card, I'm going to give you so many points, as much as 200,000 points. If you take these specific set of actions, and the consumer will go in and they will open the account. Then in the back of the mind, they have this idea that at some point I'll get my reward, find out the reward doesn't show up. They don't really actually know. Did they do all the activities necessary for them to get the rewards? They call the bank up and the bank goes, well, let me open up a ticket. Let's get back to you in a week whether you're going to achieve it or not.
Michael Moeser (10:10):
I know the feeling.
Rab Govil (10:11):
You know the feeling, right? And that's the experience. This is a customer, that's a new customer that has just opened up an account. This is a customer you want to treat with all the love and caring because they're just starting a new relationship
(10:25):
With the bank. And then the bank can quite figure it out. Sometime if the customer is mad enough, they will just give them the money. Other time they'll say, no, you haven't received this thing. Then the customer gets mad, then they dispute it and leave on the leave. So that's the customer experience that exists in still a lot of institutions. And then over and above that, the employee experience to get an offer out is even worse. And what I mean by that is on an average in any institution we work with before we get involved, the amount of time it takes to get a new product offer incentive out is close to 108 business days. So that means it takes about six months when somebody envisions that they want to do this before they can actually deliver something into the consumer's hand.
Michael Moeser (11:22):
So if I come up with an idea that I want to offer, say, $400 to somebody or 40,000 points on this product, when we've finally done all the ideation to the point where we say it's a go, it's going to take that six month period before it actually shows up in my email box
Rab Govil (11:40):
Or
Michael Moeser (11:40):
Yes. Okay, that's amazing. Why is it so complex? What are there just so many systems involved?
Rab Govil (11:46):
Oh, we looked at an average and on an average, they're close to, even in a small institution, there are like 20 to 30 people involved to get an offer out. In a large institution, there literally could be hundreds of peoples and tens of systems. And the systems are really old systems. They have to put it in the core banking system. The core banking system can take advantage of these offers. So they just try to play with it in little ways, and then they put some custom code on top of it to go make it happen.
Rab Govil (12:21):
Then they have to, once they make sure that the systems are ready to receive the offer, then they have to go make sure that the same offer shows up on the channel to get the offer to show up on the channel, somebody has to go work on the disclosures associated with the offer. Somebody has to go work on the copy. They need to make sure the copy is the right copy that can show up in an email because the size of the email might be different than the direct mail versus what needs to go on the website. They need to make sure that all of those things match each other, because if the customer walks into the bank branch versus walking onto the website and they get a different offer,
Michael Moeser (12:53):
Then
Rab Govil (12:53):
They can get met up. So the whole process right now is so very complex and cumbersome, and then the customer takes advantage of it, and then the bank needs to have all the systems ready to track it. Because you might say, Hey, the bank might say, Hey, you need to do direct deposit. You need to give your average daily balance to a certain amount, and then the bank has to track it on a daily basis, keep you informed along the way. So we saw this process and I said, well, if you really want to deliver more personalized products, pricing offers to your consumers at the microsegment level because you might require a different offer versus another person might require a different offer if you can't even do one offer to everybody, think about if you're trying to do it in a personalized
Michael Moeser (13:38):
Manner. I could not imagine, I think if it takes six months to get a single plain vanilla offer out there, but how does that fit with changing consumer expectations? Because I mean, nowadays we're in New York, you take an Uber,
Rab Govil (13:55):
It's
Michael Moeser (13:55):
A different than a taxi
Rab Govil (13:56):
Experience. It's an all demand. Yeah.
Michael Moeser (13:58):
I watch Netflix, it recommends movies to me. I look at my Amazon cart and they're suggestions. I get these suggestions all the time, and they're feeding into my consumer expectations. How is, it's fascinating.
Rab Govil (14:13):
You would expect your bank, who you do every transaction with, who actually knows you better than anybody else would know, you should be able to do a much better job
Michael Moeser (14:27):
If the system is that complex. It begs the question, are banks keeping up with consumer expectations? Are they holding their own somewhere in between? And what does it mean for the future?
Rab Govil (14:41):
I don't think banks are really keeping up with consumer expectations, but it's not all bank's fault because as I said, they have a bar they have to meet, which is Just
Michael Moeser (14:54):
Keep my money safe.
Rab Govil (14:55):
Keep your money safe. That's about 10 x more important than let's say Amazon having to deliver something to you. Even if that gets lost, it's okay. Them losing your money is not okay. Right.
Michael Moeser (15:10):
But at some point, banks that have been around for a little while, at least at some point, they've all had to reach this bar. And it sort of creates a,
Rab Govil (15:21):
Yeah, they have to. Otherwise they've got a business because fintechs and other companies who are saying, I'm going to deliver a better customer experience for you, is going to start taking market share away from them. And we are seeing that with Novo Banks and other types of institutions coming up and saying that I'm going to deliver a much, much better customer experience and you should be banking with me instead of banking with the X,
Michael Moeser (15:43):
Y, Z. Yeah. How will that change in the future? Will we just keep an acceleration of customer expectations? Is this
Rab Govil (15:50):
Yes, I think that is something you cannot beat. I mean, consumers have the opportunity to walk next door with their money, with their money. There's always the offer from another institution that say, I'll give you so much money. So they always have the expectations. If you're not delivering on that promise, I think you really risk getting left behind. So this is no longer a nice to have What we are seeing with all the financial institutions we are working with. This has really kind of bubbled up to the top of
Michael Moeser (16:28):
The list. Can you share with us an example of something that's recently occurred that you, in terms of solving a problem with a bank, that you maybe have been able to speed things along?
Rab Govil (16:41):
Yeah, absolutely. So we won't use names, but our platform is used by six of the top 10 institutions and a lot of the regional institutions right now. So in one institution, which is running, we are running the national checking offer
(17:01):
For them, within six months of delivering the offer, they were able to generate 1.8 billion in new deposits. That's amazing. The number of calls to the call center, because they had a digital status tracker, which will tell you exactly where you are in the journey went on by almost 70%. And off the calls, a very small percentage ended up in disputes because they were able to tell them exactly where they stand and the calls that ended up in disputes. 60% of those went in the bank's favor because they could exactly show them what actions they have done or not done or somebody was trying to game the system. But even more exciting is what they showed us is they were able to replace 55 manual steps, 55 manual steps within the organization by putting a comprehensive platform in place. I mean, I can't just even imagine somebody doing 55 manual things to that sounds like 55 tickets. I know.
Michael Moeser (18:08):
Now, talk to me about how cloud accelerates value. I know that's something that your company talks about and maybe begin with, what does accelerating value mean?
Rab Govil (18:21):
Yeah, so that is one of our, is tagline about accelerating value. So our whole vision is that things at institutions take a very long time to make change happen. And what defines us, the core of our company is we feel that our whole mission is to help banks accelerate value. The idea behind this is instead of you taking 108 days, it should take you 15 to 30 days. So now you can accelerate value and deliver more for your consumers. You can be more personalized. So that is what drives us on a day-to-day basis is how can we deliver value to our clients who can accelerate value to their clients, which is a consumer.
Michael Moeser (19:16):
What's the role of the cloud in all this? Yeah,
Rab Govil (19:19):
The role of the cloud is this, is that it used to be that to deploy infrastructure of this magnitude. Think about this. At one of some institutions, we're processing 200 million accounts on a daily basis. Every account that they have, we have to evaluate each account to say, if this account met all the offer conditions or not for 200 million. So the amount of data we are managing is just massive. So if you had to build the infrastructure for every banking institution, it's a massive problem.
Michael Moeser (19:55):
Mind boggling,
Rab Govil (19:56):
It's mind boggling. But the cloud allows us to deploy that in literally hours instead of having to me buy servers and do all the work that's necessary. So literally we can say, oh, we are ready to get going. By the way, next tomorrow going to, we've been working with 10 million accounts, but tomorrow we need to start working with 20 million account because we've come up with a new offer, we're going to go to a broader segment, we can bump it up and you're ready to go tomorrow.
Michael Moeser (20:25):
Oh,
Rab Govil (20:26):
That's fantastic. So it allows you to be so much more responsive to the needs.
Michael Moeser (20:30):
What are the obstacles, as you talk about the clouds, you talk about this greater ability to get things to market faster. What does that mean for a bank? For example, if you have this go to market acceleration, what
Rab Govil (20:46):
Does that mean for the bank? Yeah, you would assume that, boy, if these are the benefits they can deliver, that everybody should be, I would think, right? I think a lot of it comes down to it is how focused they're on the part of the prom and do the executives in these institutions have the vision and the drive to make it happen? Because change at any institution is hard,
Michael Moeser (21:18):
Especially the larger the organization, the more difficult change. It requires multiple moving pieces.
Rab Govil (21:25):
Yeah, I say it's like getting a bill passed to Congress. You got to get everybody to say yes, but one person can veto a certain percentage. So I think our biggest obstacle these folks have is having the vision, driving the change, and then all the tech debt in the old systems they've accumulated. How do you manage?
Michael Moeser (21:53):
Well, for the viewers that are listening in and you're talking about some of the challenges and they're probably saying, yes, that's at my institution. How have you as an organization been able to work with these larger institutions? You mentioned six out of the 10 largest, what has been the key to success in getting them to say, okay, I can see the vision now. How do you sort of put that success forward? Yeah,
Rab Govil (22:18):
It's fascinating, right? Because a lot of these banks are used to very long projects, and sometime you would start a project and the person who started the project gets moved to another job. They're not part of it. So the project just slowly dies, a slow death. So one of the things that we have taken as part of our accelerate value mantra is going to have a clear north star you want to achieve, but have an agile mindset. And what I mean by an agile mindset is, yes, I want to get here, that's my point of arrival,
Michael Moeser (22:55):
But
Rab Govil (22:55):
I need to deliver value this month, this quarter, even if the values 10% of the value might be delivered, that as long as you continue to deliver value in a very agile manner, then it keeps the energy around the project and everybody sees the benefits accruing faster that we feel is the way they need to sell it within the organization. That's the way they need to get their partners like us or other partners. They might be bringing the table to understand that. So once you kind of get that mindset going, then you do amazing things. I mean, we were at this project that we were doing for this final institution and we couldn't get the project to go live. And I was like, and I finally went and met the
Michael Moeser (23:48):
Team, but the project had already been, I guess you piloted it and you're talking about rollout
Rab Govil (23:52):
Now. Yeah, rollout. And they couldn't we get it to get live. And I said, every time we wanted to get live, somebody would say, oh, I need to do this one thing. I didn't need to do this other thing. And I said, why do we keep delaying this? Well, what we find out is they're used to their IT team that once a project come, the IT team goes away
(24:14):
And they never get that feature again. So they said the only leverage they had to hold the project for going live until every feature is done. I said, but by the time the project might die. So I said, you know what? We'll have another release in two months. Go live. This is not the end. Are you sure? As soon as we go live, are you going to go away? Okay, yeah. I promise you that we'll do this two months from now. So just getting that agile mindset going that you don't deliver great value, there'll be more value. Again, I
Michael Moeser (24:47):
Think I like that. I mean, that sounds like you're getting wins on the board, like say in a basketball game or baseball cricket, as you get the wins on the board, you're demonstrating that value and it allows you to say it keeps the momentum going. Now, talk to me about hyper-personalization. That's a term that we've heard a lot in the industry, particularly as we have the Netflix effect of,
Rab Govil (25:13):
You
Michael Moeser (25:13):
Watch this now, you like that, et cetera. And so talk to me about hyper-personalization and maybe if any examples or obstacles to it.
Rab Govil (25:23):
Absolutely. Right.
Michael Moeser (25:24):
So we
Rab Govil (25:25):
Believe, especially with banking, the needs are so unique for every consumer because all of us are at different points in our lives. At some point you are looking for,
Michael Moeser (25:40):
Someones are buying a house, someone has their daughter working here in New York
Rab Govil (25:46):
And buying a house again. But I think every person, there's the life continuum that they have different things. There's the continuum about how much money they're making, where they are in point of their lives. So when you really take a look at it, the banks have the opportunity to really create a package that just fits you like a glove, and then be able to change the package along the way as you move around the journey.
Michael Moeser (26:23):
Now the banks have the data, and I guess he who owns the data, owns the customer.
Rab Govil (26:29):
You've
Michael Moeser (26:30):
Often said that,
Rab Govil (26:30):
But
Michael Moeser (26:31):
The challenge is, and I've worked at banks before where the credit card division has this data on Michael Moeser, the home lending division has this information and there's this big wall in between. And is it the cloud? Is it the platform? What allows you to take data from all these
Rab Govil (26:50):
Different Yeah, I don't think it's a technology limitations. They have the capability and we are starting to see banks now wanting to treat the whole relationship. So I think we are seeing a trend in that direction. The challenge to your audience is how can you do it faster, right? Okay. You have the technology, you have access to the partners, you have all the capabilities in place to go make it happen. It comes down to Will and the right leadership saying that, okay, one customer, one relationship with the bank. It's not like I'm going to let the deposits team have its own relationship with the bank and the credit card team have its own relationship with the bank.
Michael Moeser (27:44):
So it's a change of mindset.
Rab Govil (27:45):
It's a change of mindset at the level of the institution that this is an institution's customer.
Michael Moeser (27:56):
Talk to me a bit more about hyper-personalization, because I use the Netflix example, that's a very surfacey. If I don't like that movie, I click or swipe right or swipe left. Right. Now, when you're talking about a bank, and you've talked earlier about the bar, keeping the money safe and sound,
Rab Govil (28:15):
And
Michael Moeser (28:15):
You've met that bar, but now you have fintechs that come in play and they offer you these things of you can get access to your money earlier, you can get micro loans, buy now, pay later. So much more dynamic. Can hyper-personalization mean something for banks? Especially as we get to 10 33 open banking? Can it help a bank create a defensive barrier?
Rab Govil (28:38):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Because a consumer doesn't want to manage multiple relationships, especially with the bank. They do it because they somehow get forced into it in a lot of cases. So there's a general desire to have one relationship. So I think as the banks provide that level of experience and can create the specific package for you, I think they can create enormous amount of goodwill with their customers. Because I mean, don't get me wrong, there'll be some customers who will want to have multiple relationships. I guess there was another marrying kind, but I think most consumers, they would rather have one relationship with the bank because that's where the money is. That's where they can get all the services, but the banks need to win that trust.
Michael Moeser (29:41):
That definitely I can see the challenge in subscriptions alone, but I think in a banking relationship or financial relationship, it gets that much more difficult to manage and certainly can provide that. What about thinking about getting started, and I want to talk about getting started because that's always a big impediment for many banks, many projects. Who do we need to involve? And especially when we talk about ai, and we'll delve into that a little more, it's always the barrier. How do I get started? There's this analysis paralysis that many banks go through in terms of what is the first step? What are some considerations that a bank needs to think about as they get started down this path of modernization of their offer
Rab Govil (30:31):
Platform or just the customer experience? So the way I generally like to tell the institution is, as I said, have the not star. This is the experience I want. And then have a bar which says, this is the first thing I want to solve and pick anything.
Michael Moeser (30:51):
Give me an example.
Rab Govil (30:53):
A good example would be that we are working with an institution and they're really struggling. They have this idea that they want to improve the whole experience, but the first thing they're struggling with, they're not getting the right disclosures on their website.
(31:09):
I said, just solve that problem first. You have a new offer or a new product. Make sure the product and disclosures match up because otherwise you're basically creating a regulatory risk. Yeah, that's true. If they don't match us, or another institution came to us and they were like, Hey, one of the biggest problems I have is I offer somebody as much as 200,000 points to join it, but depending on their credit score, et cetera, the 200,000 points might go down to 50,000 points because the amount of money, they will do that. So I set expectations at this high, but then they don't know about the fact they're only going to get 50,000 points when they're pretty far down the,
Michael Moeser (31:56):
That's a pretty negative experience.
Rab Govil (31:58):
So I said, just solve that problem. Tell them right up front in a way. So just go and ask them, here's the points, but if you give me a little bit of information, I'll tell you exactly how many points you would get based on how much you qualify. So we will find that throughout the customer journey, throughout your internal employee journey, there are many, many pieces that you can quickly solve that will create a lift, and then you can go after this. So I don't think they don't need to think about this as this massive project. They can literally take a bite out of the elephant, one bite at a time.
Michael Moeser (32:38):
Now, talk to me about ai, and we've had AI for quite some time, but now we've moved into generative ai.
Rab Govil (32:47):
We've
Michael Moeser (32:47):
Had predictive AI for many years now we have generative AI where it's creating content, large language models, et cetera. How has AI changed and is changing workflow automation for offers?
Rab Govil (33:03):
That's fascinating. So my AI paid for my college, my master's degree. So I wrote one of the papers in the area of expert systems, and because of that, I became a president's scholarship, and that paid for part of my college. So AI has been around for a very long time, and I always say AI seems to be the word for technology that's sufficiently advanced enough that doesn't feel like normal technology, everybody.
Michael Moeser (33:30):
I almost have to say ai. If you think about credit scores
Rab Govil (33:34):
And
Michael Moeser (33:34):
Credit cards from the fifties, you had some kind of predictive score.
Rab Govil (33:39):
Is that ai? In some cases it was, right? And to be able to make sense. So my belief about AI is it's no, I mean, it's different, but it's similar to any new technology that you can use to help either deliver a better customer experience or help the life of your team members get better. So the trick about AI is finding the right use cases. I'll give you some example. Use cases that have been pretty successful. One of the use cases that we use AI for is reviewing your marketing material before it goes out the door. Right now, a human reads, everything does, the disclosure kind of matches the offer, literally. And in some cases, so if you're doing personalization, they might have hundreds and hundreds of pages that a human is going through line by line. In fact, they have proofing parties where everybody sits around a room and makes sure that nobody makes a mistake, and they'll have one person do it and another person check it to be able to do this type of things. AI is amazing at, they can extract the content, they can make sure that if you made this statement, the disclosure kind of matches. So that's an amazing use case.
Michael Moeser (34:58):
But what about, I mean, that sounds very straightforward, certainly eliminates work, but how is it working in terms of, say, creating hyper-personalization or potentially making the offers?
Rab Govil (35:11):
Yeah, so I think there's lots of opportunity. I think the worry for all these institutions still is, is it safe? Is it control? Is it going to make a suggestion that is not okay. So I think what we have seen as we have deployed AI at these institutions is there's always a human in the loop.
Michael Moeser (35:33):
So
Rab Govil (35:33):
It's helping you. So
Michael Moeser (35:36):
It'll make the offer or create something, but before it goes to RAB
Rab Govil (35:42):
Or
Michael Moeser (35:42):
Michael, someone is going to review and make sure that this is alluded,
Rab Govil (35:46):
And they might even review with another AI system that is set up for safety. So the whole process can become productive, more productive, but it's more as an exercise in automating and helping the humans do a better job.
Michael Moeser (36:07):
So AI, in a way, it's changing the jobs of the people who are in the offer management system.
Rab Govil (36:13):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Across the whole institution, the jobs are changing. The work that was repetitive or simple, the AI should be able to do it in a much more easier way. Just like I was explaining the whole idea of being able to review a document, like somebody doesn't have to come and read every line.
Michael Moeser (36:34):
Yeah, I don't think I'd want to be at one of those proofing parties, but it definitely sounds like it can, at least that accelerates the value, accelerates the go to market capability, and I certainly see something, I guess as you look forward, how is AI going to change or continue to evolve the offer, I guess systems,
Rab Govil (37:00):
If you will? Absolutely. So I was just reading a 50,000 page essay. One of the things which is in my portfolio is a foundation that I'm very proud of called AI for All, where we are trying to make sure that AI is used responsibility for humanity. AI is in a responsible manner. So we have a whole team that's focused on it. And some of the leaders in the AI industry sit on the board there with me. And one of them just sent me a paper and he says, and the best way they described it is, the way you can think about AI is how more advanced it's going to become. So he said, if the AI becomes as advanced as a human being, then it's easy to predict what's going to look like. It's going to be very similar to the diffusion of any other technology. Just in the industrial revolution, people went from being able to create something that took months to, they could do it now with machines in a day, similar type of idea. Now, if AI really becomes generally available as intelligence, then we don't know anybody trying to predict that at this time is just basically throwing, right? So that doesn't make sense. But most likely it'll follow very similar diffusion of technology that as you have seen in the past.
Michael Moeser (38:27):
So as we come to a close, can you give our audience some closing thoughts in terms of as they're about to go out, think about their offer systems, think about their work that they're doing, what could you recommend, I guess, closing thoughts in terms of as
Rab Govil (38:48):
You Yeah, your dog? Great, great. Great. Great question. Right? I think my closing thoughts for most of the folks who are in the banking industry is, what is super, super important at this time is to understand that the world is changing and the pace of change is not going to slow down. It's only accelerated in terms of doing this, right? So you no longer have the opportunity to just stay with the status quo. I mean, I know it provides a sense of comfort. Sure. But you need to adopt that mindset that I'm here to create value for my customers, change is going to happen, and I'm going to learn to really embrace this change and in some cases, be the driver of the change.
Michael Moeser (40:10):
Got it. I think that's great. So not just embrace the change, but be the driver of the
Rab Govil (40:15):
Change, but the driver of the change, right? Because that's how I create value. If I continue to be a resistor to this change, you are going to get run over. That's the only thing I have to tell you sooner or later. Well,
Michael Moeser (40:31):
I guess that's a great way to wrap it up. So think about not just embracing change, but be the driver of change. So Rab, I want to thank you for your time today and I want to thank our audience for tuning in, and we wish you a great day. Thank you. Bye.
