Maya – Banorte’s digital assistant that makes banking easier for customers – has won international acclaim.
Maya was recognized as one of the best banking innovations worldwide in the 2021 Analytics and Artificial Intelligence category by the European Finance Management Association (EFMA) and Accenture.
Today’s customers have become accustomed to digital messaging and remote access to their financial institutions, particularly amid COVID-19 restrictions. They want real-time answers and transactions from anywhere, and that’s what Maya provides.
The dynamic personal assistant guides customers by answering questions about financial products and services; helping with payments, transfers or raising claims; managing account statements; and executing payments and transfers in a more efficient and expedited way.
And Maya is the first virtual assistant in Mexico capable making monetary transactions via chat.
Customers can conveniently interact with Maya using both voice and chat and can access the digital assistant through Banorte’s online banking, as well as the Google Assistant mobile app, Google Home, the Amazon Alexa mobile app and Amazon Echo devices.
“The introduction of Maya is another example of our ongoing commitment to making life easier for our valued customers,” said Banorte Chairman Carlos Hank González.
EFMA, an association of more than 2,550 retail financial services companies in 133 countries, said the award winners have a deep understanding their markets and what it takes to succeed.
“There has been significant disruption over the last 18 months, but the financial services industry is no stranger to disruption,” EFMA CEO John Berry said in a statement.
Innovative banks, he said, demonstrate “how responsive and dynamic the industry as a whole has been during these unprecedented times.”
Banorte launched Maya in 2018 as part of the bank’s digital transformation. As with any AI-powered tool, the challenge was to create a natural, casual conversation with customers.
To create these types of interactions, Banorte used IBM’s AI solution, Watson. With Watson, the bank only needed to train and calibrate the system one time before implementing it throughout the bank. This allowed Banorte to quickly roll Maya out to all the bank’s channels, allowing customers immediate access to its services.