Liberbank and everis bring 5G and virtual reality technology to banking services to explore an improved customer experience and personalised service; the Virtual reality space is designed to lend a sense of familiarity, immersion, and confidentiality.
Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming more even more popular, reaching a wider audience every day. Virtual reality will be widely used in industries like education, health, engineering, automobile, and entertainment. The financial sector, which is already incorporating artificial intelligence and the cloud as part of its digital transformation, could be the next to embrace virtual reality.
Pilot solution for early adopters
Over the past years, in-person visits to branches have dropped off. Due to that, Liberbank and everis have launched an immersive space where advisor and customer can share a virtual environment that makes it possible to simulate and visualise personalised financial scenarios in an interactive, educational way.
The experience is intuitive and highly natural, making it accessible to any user from everywhere. Leveraging remote assistance, it delivers a personal experience where advisors can support customers in achieving their financial goals by using enriched visual elements, avoiding visits to local branches or queuing.
The pilot kicked off in April targets initiatlly the ‘early adopters’ although the scenario created is accessible to any customer.
The solution has been developed with no expensive hardware elements that require extra cost for the customer. Instead, customers can use low-cost “cardboard” created for use with their mobile devices, although the solution runs as well in more advanced devices with a better resolution and graphically enriched.
Through this innovative experience, Liberbank continues to combine digitalisation for routine tasks with quality and expert, personalised remote management for its customers. This is reflected in the growth of the “Junto a ti (Together with You)” remote management program, which already has close to 200,000 customers.
5G will mark a new era in virtual and augmented reality
Virtual reality, which already has an extensive track record in several major industries, is in full expansion with the progressive improvement of graphics processors and the introduction of 5G, which will make VR glasses increasingly lighter and more powerful at a lower cost. Banks are already experimenting with different ways to use virtual reality. Together with augmented reality, this market represents a major opportunity for companies to create a unique added value in the experience and relationship with their customers and reduce costs.
The initiative spearheaded by Liberbank, is developed in conjunction with the everis Digital Banking Hub, composed by a dedicated team with a mission to promote and facilitate innovation in different domains, based on a collaborative space open to customers and startups where they can enjoy a full experience through different scenarios and the use of digital solutions.
According to Sergio Hermida, head of Innovation and Open Banking at Liberbank, “we see how technologies like virtual and augmented reality and 5G will soon change the world, the way we relate to each other, how we work, how we make decisions, etc. At Liberbank we want to look to the future and explore relationship models yet to come. The response from customers is being highly positive: beyond the initial wow factor, most agree that they had an exclusive, personalised experience that helped them to better understand finances and therefore make better decisions.”
María de Miguel, everis Digital Banking Hub team manager, explains that “being able to work with customers who together with us explore innovative technologies that in the future will be a trend within the banking sector, means we can more quickly develop new revolutionary use cases that connect financial institutions and customers without the need to visit their local branch, enhancing the user experience.”
About Liberbank and the digital transformation
Liberbank's open banking strategy to address its digital transformation is making solid progress, with relevant milestones such as the recent launch of its 100% digital mortgage platform based on the concept that the customer controls the mortgage and the contracting process.
The open banking strategy launched in 2017, Liberbank has closed agreements with JP Morgan for investment funds and long-term savings management; with fintech company October for crowdlending (individual-SME financing); with Sony Interactive Entertainment (owner of the PlayStation® brand) with a common strategy for the design and marketing of financial products and services under the PlayStation® trademark, aimed at Sony users, buyers and customers and the community of current and future PS players; with LeasePlan in the car leasing market; and with the US group EVO Payments, which specialises in payment services. It has recently become the Official Bank of Real Madrid for the team’s 2020-21 season. In mid-2020 Liberbank launched Liby, the bank's AI-based virtual advisor, which offers customers a new interaction channel that enhances service by personalising the relationship and saving time. Liberbank’s approach to digital transformation, based on the human-centric concept, is critical as it is a natural conversational human interface using NLP (Natural Language Processing) instead of traditional question/answer databases.