Ever since ChatGPT entered the market, many have claimed AI could be the most transformative technological shift in our generation.
In the banking industry, many are still wondering if Generative AI (GenAI) is ready for prime time. At the same time, bank executives are faced with mounting challenges across a number of fronts, including rising interest rates creating net interest income (NIM) pressure, handling more volume with a smaller staff (leaving critical staff spending far too much time on clerical tasks) and the long-term challenge of hiring and onboarding the next generation of talent.
Over the past months, I’ve heard some version of these concerns from various colleagues and clients and they all have the same question: Can AI solve these problems?
The short answer is yes, but there’s a caveat: new AI tools have the potential to transform the banking industry, if they are incorporated into a tool specifically designed for the banking industry. That’s because GenAI and LLM tools are only as good as the data used to create and train the models — and banking is a highly specialized and regulated industry. So while the average AI tool might be able to compose a standard email, it won’t be able to learn and interpret bank-, customer, and deal-specific information in order to deliver substantial value.
That’s why I’m pleased to announce the expansion of Andi, Q2’s original AI copilot for banking, into a copilot platform purpose-built for bankers.
The Andi copilot platform is an evolution of Q2’s language model-based AI assistant for commercial relationship managers, which was introduced in 2017 through Q2’s PrecisionLender solution. Andi was the first AI copilot designed to provide in-the-moment, contextual coaching to bankers and client relationship managers.
Since its introduction, Andi has accumulated seven years of customer interaction data from more than 150 banks and 29,000 bankers and processed approximately $1.6 trillion in active loan balances annually — creating the Andi knowledge model.
The Andi copilot platform combines that deep, data-driven understanding of bank policies, procedures and workflows with new GenAI language model capabilities. And we will use the copilot platform to deliver AI copilot solutions across a wide range of Q2 products to support more bankers and more use cases.
Put simply, the new GenAI language model capabilities make Andi easier to use and more flexible for bankers to interact with.
Q2 aims to unlock powerful new use cases that will address the highest-value areas where bankers need copilot help. By integrating new GenAI capabilities into the Andi copilot platform, Q2 will make Andi easier to interact with, empowering it to understand and do more for bankers. The Andi copilot platform represents an expansion of Andi from a single copilot embedded in PrecisionLender, to a platform developing AI copilot solutions across Q2’s product portfolio, supporting bankers across their entire application stack.
How does Andi drive value?
Bankers spend a lot of time on tedious, time-consuming tasks to do their jobs, spending hours in various tools, forms, logins, applications, calculations, and reentering data. These clerical tasks must be done, but they take focus away from what humans are best at, such as providing advice, making decisions, and building relationships — all of the complex human work required to ultimately create financial prosperity.
Andi helps make bankers more efficient and effective in two ways. It automates the things computers can do well, minimizing minutiae for bankers, making them more efficient and letting them focus on what they do well. Crucially, it will help automate or accelerate many of the clerical tasks that bankers or relationship managers (RMs) spend 40 to 60% of their time on, making RMs more focused and productive. And, critically, it looks at data from across the financial institution and industry to understand what’s working and what isn’t, and deliver client-specific coaching to bankers in the moment as they’re working on deals — making them smarter and more effective. Andi is already proven to drive better RM performance and increased profitability across the commercial portfolio.
Why Andi?
We believe horizontal or general AI solutions do have a role. We believe that soon, AI copilots will be a common part of how we work every day—including bankers. While we believe any good AI tool will need to be trained in order to function deeply inside the financial institution, we also expect bankers to adopt multiple tools that help them in small ways throughout their day, like Microsoft Copilot for the Office Suite or Salesforce’s Einstein GPT tools.
Andi can propose contextual recommendations that are specific to the bank, banker, client, and deal because it understands the banking industry and bank-specific workflows, policies, and procedures. Only with this knowledge is Andi able to know and propose the next best action or provide complex pricing options that work for all parties.
Moreover, Andi can be taught and fed data for each specific bank via the Skills Builder framework. This is a critical differentiator: for AI to solve real challenges for bankers, it has to deeply understand the industry and the specific bank — and the process to “train” a general GPT tool is extremely time-, effort-, and cost-intensive.
As with all Q2 products, we have ensured that the bank's data is protected, including data segregation. Andi meets the world’s largest banks' high security and compliance standards. All data is non-attributable and de-identified, and encrypted with TLS (Transport Layer
Security) 1.2+ and 256-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) protocols.
Q2 has developed a strong foundational knowledge of how best to leverage AI for banking, and this launch is an extension of our work. While other companies are jumping on the bandwagon, Q2 has been working steadily to develop the next generation of Andi as a tested and trusted tool.
In conjunction with launching the Andi copilot platform, we’re announcing a pilot program with select customers to develop the next generation of Andi, which will have universal access to third-party applications and workflows, unlocking powerful new use cases that span Q2 and third-party applications.
Click here to learn more about Q2’s Andi copilot platform.