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Arpine Pilosyan, Deputy CEO for Technologies of Armeconombank, spoke about the latest technologies, the importance and challenges of the bank's digital transformation, mobile/online banking services, and upcoming plans.

Digital platform, digital transformation, latest technologies… Today these terms seem to have become an integral part of the banking sector as well. Why have these terms become so relevant for the banking sector?

The primary demand for digital transformation and introduction of the latest technologies in the banking sector comes from the customer, and such demands change quite quickly in the modern world as the needs of the customer change. Therefore, banks need to transform just as quickly to swiftly respond to the demands of each customer, especially considering the fact that not only banks, but also fintech companies are significant competitors for banks now. Financial institutions today mainly compete with online services provided on digital platforms, their speed, simple interface, security, rich set of products. At the same time, customers tend to use such platforms which provide a 24/7 opportunity to perform safe, advantageous banking services and receive online financial advice without having to visit the bank.

The modern banking system competes with services provided on digital platforms in financial market, mainly through mobile/online banking. What makes the bank stand out on these platforms?

The bank's strategy is aimed at continuous digital transformation by making it a mindset and a workstyle. Here, a very important thing to be considered is that any digital solution and process must be based on the satisfaction of the customers’ needs.. Therefore, the development directions of the bank, especially on the digital platform, tend to serve this very purpose and create a customer-centric environment where a customer can receive financial advice and banking services, carry out financial operations, receive news from the bank so that the customer has a feeling of presence at his/her bank regardless of the platform.

We have chosen a very eloquent slogan for our mobile/online banking (AEB Mobile/Online), “Your digital bank”, because it is a good way to talk to and quickly respond to the customer, which enables a 24/7 communication with customers located anywhere in the world and offers them access to almost all services provided by the bank. Moreover, the bank's customers can use the digital platform for such additional services as ordering digital cards, instant loans, Visa Direct and Money Send transfers, Visa Stop Payment Service, attaching a card to an ApplePay/GooglePay wallet from mobile application, etc.

What do you see as modern challenges of digital transformation and what steps are you taking to meet them?

We already spoke about the banks constantly facing competition challenges including such posed by fintech companies, therefore, the ability to quickly develop products and provide services tailored to customers’ requirements and needs, that is, the ability to respond to the customer quickly and, at the same time, with "quality", is of strategic importance. Customers are no longer willing to accept standard solutions, and banks can no longer offer off-the-shelf solutions used for decades. The competition in this regard will become more intense in the near future as open financial services have already penetrated our financial market, and banks will have to compete on a different platform after all. Let me detail this a little, since we still don't use this concept too often. Tthrough open banking services, that is, open banking, customers can execute financial operations, make bank payments, manage bank accounts, etc. on third-party platforms/applications. By the way, we were among the first in the banking market to succeed with our innovative project within the framework of open banking and allow our customers to use all the services offered by both the bank and the partner through a free Visa digital co-branded card issued within minutes on the same platform.

What other solutions can the bank offer to make the customer’s life easier? What is “customer-centric”, and what steps have you taken in that direction?

The bank constantly pays great attention to the variety of services provided and the process of improving their quality, and expanding the range of services provided through AEB Mobile/Online systems and self-service terminals, which represents the main list of  services provided more frequently by the bank. In particular, the number of customers serviced in AEB Mobile/Online systems has increased by about 3 times over the past 2 years, and the number of online transactions has increased by more than 2,5 times over the same period. The bank is equipped with a wide network of new generation ATMs, currency exchange and cash deposit terminals, and these self-service devices are available in the entire branch network of the bank.

Within the scope of new software solutions and optimization of business processes, we attach significant importance to reducing customer service time and to more efficient use of the personnel’s working time. To achieve this, our team has introduced and keeps improving a software system which manages the lending process and offers a completely automated loan application review and approval procedure.

Last year, we purchased new equipment for card data personalization and now we issue premium metal cards, as well as cards of vertical design. At the same time, we keep upgrading our main and backup data processing centers to ensure the continuous and uninterrupted operation of the bank on the one hand and support the quantitative growth and speed of services provided on the other.

Let us talk about the plans a little more -

As we proceed with the introduction of new digital technologies, we will keep special focus on the improvement of modern software solutions and technical refurbishment in our service toolkit. One such project is the electronic signature system currently being implemented, which significantly increases the convenience of customer service and saves time.

The purchase of new generation ATMs, the increase in the number of self-service terminals and currency converters, as well as the expansion of the range of the services provided services through such equipment and AEB Mobile/Online systems are among the bank's continuous development projects which let us improve the quality of our customer service and strengthen the Bank's presence in the market.

For the near future, we plan to come up with several new products and solutions such as AEB Rewards (integration of a customer loyalty program), integration of a biometric identification software in AEB Mobile application, and many other interesting digital bank projects - we will talk about them later.

We are also planning to integrate artificial intelligence into the customer's credit history, namely into the scoring evaluation and online identification process as a banking technology – appropriate survey by our team is already in progress for this - and later also into chat bots that would solve customers’ problems by providing the necessary information in real time.

In summary, we arrive at a conclusion that human intelligence keeps striving to make its life easier with new solutions, new technologies, artificial intelligence, and we, as a bank, quite naturally follow this pattern, too.. We will stay true to our vision by further offering innovative and advanced banking services in the financial market, keeping the customer trust, and adhering to the principles of our bank.