VTB assessed the impact of artificial intelligence on the future of offices

The development of artificial intelligence and digitalization of the banking sector in the near future is unlikely to lead to the complete disappearance of offices, VTB First Deputy Chairman Dmitry Pyanov said during Finopolis.

He believes that the complete disappearance of offices is unlikely. Artificial intelligence in banking will develop in the direction of intelligent assistants.

“This will reduce the load on the offices, on the call center, but there will still be people who need to come to the branch. The situation is similar to the situation with payments: someone pays from their phone, but someone still prefers a plastic card,” said the top manager, noting that services are built based on human demand.

VTB proposes to apply the same rule of human-centricity to the development of rules and criteria that can be used when deciding on the creation of components of the national digital infrastructure of the financial market on the side of the state or market participants. The Bank of Russia previously published the corresponding report for public discussion.

“We are on the side of the Central Bank, we support all the criteria for creating elements of the national digital infrastructure. There are two considerations. In the report [„Национальная цифровая инфраструктура финансового рынка“] The criteria of this infrastructure are divided into critical and important. At the same time, ensuring the continuous operation of the financial market is a critical criterion, and the availability of services for citizens and businesses is an important one. At the same time, from the point of view of human assessment, a violation of continuity as a result of a failure, a violation of accessibility as a result of the lack of equidistance of the infrastructure or the lack of interbank interaction are the same consequences. Therefore, the criteria of importance and criticality for individual areas can and should be assessed, in our opinion, through the prism of the client,” said Dmitry Pyanov.

As a second point, he mentioned the speed of implementation of regulation.

“A unique situation has developed in our market: we are ahead of many countries in digital development, but we are wasting a huge amount of time on agreements, approvals, and standardization before we move on to creating some elements of the national digital infrastructure. This is only the first consultation report. Our wish is to quickly begin testing these criteria in practice. Practice is the main thing,” summed up the first deputy chairman of VTB.