Bahrain - Bank ABC, a leading international bank in Mena region, is inviting autonomous financial advisory solution providers to take part in its innovation challenge hosted as part of Bahrain Open Banking Supernova 2022, led by the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB).

The challenge, which closes on June 26, is aimed at scouting unique technological solutions to power the bank’s AI-driven, emotionally intelligent, digital human assistant, ‘Fatema’ to serve as an autonomous financial advisor for corporates and individuals, said a statement from ABC.

This initiative comes as part of Bank ABC’s comprehensive multi-year Group Digital Transformation Programme aimed at building a client-centric ‘bank of the future,’ driving digital transformation in financial services in the Mena region and beyond.

Bank ABC said the innovation challenge is open to regional and global solution providers, leveraging open banking ecosystems.

The proposed solution will be utilized to enable the Bank’s digital human avatar ‘Fatema’ to serve as a smart ‘Digital Financial Advisor’ and further augment her existing intuitive customer support capabilities.

On the innovation challenge, Group Chief Innovation Officer Dr Yousif Almas said: "At Bank ABC, we envisage the future of banking to be very different from the current way of banking. We endeavor to be at the forefront of shaping the future of banking as we make it more intuitive, integrated and flexible for our clients."

"The winning solution will be considered for integration with our Digital Assistant’s human-like conversational AI capabilities to offer corporates and individuals instant contextual financial advisory services, at their convenience," he stated.

"It may also enable the Bank to effectively communicate in sign language and ultimately spur financial inclusion in the region," he added.

The proposed solution must connect the bank’s ‘Digital Assistant’ to an open banking infrastructure to enable it to provide holistic financial advisory services through a frictionless, secure and effortless experience.

Furthermore, it should provide the digital assistant with the appropriate use cases and data visualisation capabilities through APIs.

According to Bank ABC, the full challenge criteria, technical requirements and terms and conditions are available on Finhub973’s website.

The winner will be declared on July 5, following two shortlisting rounds on June 30 and July 7, and if ready, will be given the opportunity to develop a proof-of-concept (POC) by integrating the proposed solution with the Bank’s Digital Assistant (Fatema).

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