Malaysian consumers ready to adopt AI, automation in digital banking

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian consumers are willing to adopt new bank services based on emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence ( AI) and machine learning.

They are also willing to support data sharing in an Open Banking environment, but only if privacy and security concerns are addressed.

Open Banking allows banks to share data with other organisations in order to offer new services to customers and new revenue streams for the banks, a statement said.

These findings are according to a new research from Unisys Corp into Malaysia’s banking industry. It is a study about the attitudes of banking customers in Malaysia, Australia, Hong Kong, Philippines and Taiwan.

The survey reveals that Malaysian bank customers have a strong appetite for technology innovations to enable digital bank services – depending on the type of transaction.

Fifty-two per cent of Malaysian consumers are comfortable with their bank using software and algorithms to assess online credit card applications.

Vice- president financial services, Richard Parker said less consumers are willing to use for “life events” such as home loan applications which involve larger financial amounts and emotional involvement.

Forty per cent of Malaysians meanwhile support their bank sharing their personal data with other companies to access financial products – the second highest support in Asia Pacific.

However, 38 per cent do not support it, citing concerns about privacy and security. Malaysia recorded the highest level of desire to keep personal information private.

Parker added for Open Banking to take off in Asia, banks must address customer concerns about how they protect customer data – not just in the bank but across all of the departments, partners and agencies in the value chain.

Unisys is helping banks to address these concerns with Elevate - – an end-to-end, digital banking software platform and suite of applications designed to help financial institutions deliver an instantly secure, omnichannel banking experience to their customers. — Bernama