United Bank for Africa has said its chatbot Leo now covers 17 African countries and has one million subscribers.
The group disclosed this during the commencement of the first session of the week-long Social Media Week Lagos 2019.
UBA noted that Leo was launched in January 2018 to enable customers of the bank have access to select banking services including account opening, loan applications, account balance checking, cheque confirmations, bill payment, account freezing and instant notifications.
Described as an “alpha version” by digital enthusiasts, Leo has surpassed one million users on the bank’s mobile app, in just 12 months, because of its numerous benefits and acceptability, a feat its close rivals have not been able to attain, the bank stated.
It added, “The AI-driven virtual assistant, which also has Facebook and WhatsApp banking capabilities, was first unveiled in January and today, one year later remains the preferred chat banker in Nigeria and across Africa where UBA is present , because it has clinically leap-frogged others in every sense of it.
“The formulation of this product is consistent with the bank’s customer first philosophy, where we are doing things not the way we like, but focusing on what the customers want, where they want it and in the exact platform they want it,” the Managing Director, UBA, Kennedy Uzoka, had said at the unveiling of the chatbot in 2018.
The bank’s Head of Online Banking, Augustine Abolusoro, in a presentation titled Game of Bots at the eventdisclosed that Leo was not just the first artificial intelligence powered chatbot in Africa, but that it was also a multi-lingual chatbot with capability to speak languages like English, French, and Portuguese.
He said the company planned to include Yoruba and other Nigerian languages very soon.
