AI Will Offer Everyone A More Secure Private Banking Experience, Says Discovery Bank With New Launch

Discovery Bank wants to offer all of its customers “private banking combined with financial analysts” powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Discovery Bank CEO, Hylton Kallner, launched a set of impressive features in Johannesburg on Thursday, promising that it was “democratising private banking to the whole Discovery Bank client base.”

AI upgrades have arrived

The new iteration of the banking app and its services will be rolled out today, he added. Among these are a useful new series of security features and virtual credit card controls. Customers can now create up to 50 virtual cards and organise them in clever new ways, including adjusting each card’s individual daily or monthly limits, as well as spending limits for, say, international transactions.

Each digital wallet using the bank account (a smartphone or smartwatch, for instance) appears as a separate wallet, so you can delete one on a stolen phone. I particularly like that level of granularity, as the industry calls being able to tweak small settings.

The next level of security – Discovery is calling it the “digital account vault” – is the most impressive. It lets you set up an additional “layer of security” (that phrase alone is music to my ears) which lets you hide certain accounts behind an invisibility cloak, as they would describe it in a Harry Potter novel.

To access this hidden vault, you need a special code, but Discovery Bank also prompts you to create a panic code. This can be entered when you are under duress, and while the app will continue to function normally, it will also send a “silent alarm” (very heist movie-esque) that alerts the bank and immediately initiates fraud monitoring. They’ll even call the cops or send an armed response to your last known location.

“Once you enter your chosen panic code, transactions will continue to be processed as normal, but it will alert our fraud management team. They will start monitoring transactions and, when necessary, activate an emergency response,” Kallner told a room of financial advisors and some journalists.

That’s a service you don’t have to suggest twice to security-mad South Africans.

This AI infusion will allow Discovery Bank to do a range of other services better, says Kallner.

“It allows you to ask the most complicated questions that it can reflect back on with personal recommendations,” he said. “This effectively creates a private banking combined with financial analysts for every client.”

Discovery has “thousands of data points for each client,” allowing AI to use these to personalise its offerings for each customer.

“The global rise in phishing, website cloning, card fraud, and other social engineering tactics highlights the evolving sophistication of fraudsters and the shift of fraud risk to the client and their smartphone,” Kallner added.

“While technology has made payments faster and more secure, banks must go further by empowering clients with the tools and protections they need to navigate these risks confidently.”

Some of the other useful features include a new way to get “simple documents like tax certificates and statements,” via a simple WhatsApp request. Like any good AI-powered chatbot should, it will interact through voice notes or text messages in over 50 languages. Kallner says this is “the most sophisticated service and private banking experience we have ever been able to offer to clients through AI.”

Since its launch in March 2019, the bank now has over a million customers and is adding more than 1,500 new clients a day. “Two out of three are completely new to the group,” said Kallner.

Discovery has outgrown its early beginnings as a medical insurer and now offers a range of other insurance, while it is now the largest administrator of medical aid services in the country. All of the services and Discovery Miles offerings have been migrated into the banking app, which is an obvious evolution. Discovery knows a thing or too about developing software.

“The Discovery Bank app is now the platform for all the activities,” Kallner added, before mentioning the Discovery 911 service that lets customers request an ambulance, get roadside assistance, or even help around the house (from a plumber, electrician, or locksmith).

He then demonstrated how he started a chat in WhatsApp with the bank’s AI chatbot, which was authenticated with the Discovery Bank app, and then sent a voice note request. The chatbot responded with both a voice note and text message. You can ask for a bunch of things, including documents from the last three months. This is “incredibly powerful, the next evolution of banking,” he stressed.