TORONTO — Bank of America announced the addition of AI capabilities to its CashPro Chat function at Sibos 2023 Monday, bringing an enhanced user experience to its corporate and commercial clients. 

The $3.2 trillion bank’s CashPro Chat now uses the same proprietary technology as the bank’s AI-driven consumer-facing bot Erica, Tom Durkin, global head of CashPro in global transaction services at Bank of America, told Bank Automation News.

Erica was built to understand natural language, create accessible data, answer questions clearly and learn from its users, Bank of America Chief Executive Brian Moynihan said at Sibos Monday. With the bank’s investment in Erica’s knowledge, adoption and technology, it brought those capabilities to the commercial side. 

For example, this quarter Erica will be used 200 million times and those interactions offer more data, customer feedback and even development ideas, Moynihan said. In the past, all of that contact would have been emails, calls or through some other interface. All of those interactions can now be recorded efficiently for more streamlined use of client data, which will now be true for commercial clients, too. 

Adopting CashPro Chat

The CashPro platform is used by more than 40,000 corporate and commercial clients. The key with CashPro Chat adoption is making it known that it answers corporate questions accurately and quickly, Maureen Jarvis, head of GTS Canada at Bank of America, told BAN. 

Once clients recognize they can use CashPro Chat for day-to-day questions, bank associates will be able to deal with more complex issues, she said.

CashPro chat rolled out at the start of 2023, but the AI capabilities have only been in market for about a month, Durkin said, noting that adoption is expected to scale quickly.

“A majority of our commercial and business banking clients in the U.S., they’re probably Bank of America consumers as well,” Durkin said. “So, they already have this degree of familiarity with the technology and that’s what’s contributing to our uptake.” 

CashPro enhancements

CashPro continues to be an area of investment for Bank of America. 

Last month, the bank rolled out Global Digital Disbursements in Canada on CashPro, introducing a business-to-consumer payments solution that aims to bring consistent digital solutions to all of its markets.  

Additionally, the bank will have an early adopter pilot of commercial CashPro offerings in November and plans to launch CashPro Insights and CashPro supply chain solutions, according to a release. 

“Even later this year, we’ll have some more stuff that’s coming in October and November,” Durkin said.