“A very impressive entry with great specific applications and end results.” – Judges’ comment.
Ally Financial’s development of a proprietary, scalable and secure platform that allows enterprise-wide usage of artificial intelligence, including new-to-market generative AI tools and models highly impressed the AI Awards judging panel. The Ally team utilized its digital native approach and smaller size to nimbly work through red tape and internal structures to benefit from the application as soon as possible.
The chatbot Ally built for bank deposit customers and auto loan servicing receives 20,000 conversations per month, and over 60% of all conversations are contained to the bot without human intervention. There was no roadmap for developing this kind of AI-powered tool, so Ally designed their own to ensure customers were the focus.
The initial transformation involved moving enterprise applications to the cloud, consolidating data from multiple business lines into one warehouse, and updating network security. The shift from having disparate locations for data and applications to a consistent strategy where everything is centralized, allowed the technology organization to operate smoothly and embraced an internal AI revolution.
“Ally’s development of a proprietary, scalable, and secure platform for enterprise-wide usage of artificial intelligence, including generative AI tools, demonstrates a high level of innovation and technological advancement.” – Judges’ comment.
Following the mass growth of generative AI (genAI) tools, it became apparent that Ally needed to adjust course on its transformation journey. The team emphasized the human element of the evolution alongside privacy and security controls – essential for a higghly regulated financial industry. The result was the development of Ally.ai, a proprietary company platform for all AI applications built in-house that encompasses traditional machine learning and ML Ops capabilities as well as new genAI capabilities.
“The integration of traditional machine learning capabilities with new generative AI models showcases Ally’s commitment to staying at the forefront of AI technology and leveraging it to enhance customer experiences and internal processes.” – Judges’ comment.
By developing an adaptable product, Ally’s AI guides were able to ensure the implementation of both classic and genAI tools as new opportunities arose. An internal team of professionals in financial service fields, including regulatory compliance, risk management, audit review and advise on genAI use cases.
The marketing team is using genAI via the Ally.ai platform to determine keywords and tags for digital SEO campaigns and to search for inspiration to write short copy used in specific customer-facing campaigns. Since using Ally.ai, the team’s productivity increased 20% – having the tool available reduces workloads and serves as a creative springboard.
Elsewhere, Ally’s customer care teams explored how those answering customer calls could be supported in their daily work. Ally launched a call summarization pilot program with more than 700 associates in Ally’s call center. Over the next 30 days, Ally.ai assisted associates in transcribing and summarizing live customer service calls in real time using the platform’s private large language model.
“The nomination emphasizes Ally’s ability to navigate organizational complexities and leverage its digital-native approach to swiftly implement AI solutions, leading to significant improvements in efficiency and productivity.” – Judges’ comment.
The result was that summarizations steadily improved. As the pilot program progressed, accuracy increased from 20-25% to 75% of summaries requiring no additional changes or human modification. In two months, 82% of summaries required no additional modifications meaning associates could focus their energy on meaningful customer interactions.
“The deployment of AI applications, such as the Ally Assist chatbot and call summarization tool, has resulted in tangible benefits for both customers and employees, including increased productivity, enhanced customer interactions, and improved service quality.” – Judges’ comment.
