RBC’s New AI Platform Analyzes 13 Million Records in 20 Minutes

The platform can also process transaction sequences at a speed of less than one millisecond each.

July 23, 2020

Need to Know

RBC’s new AI computing platform is designed to transform the consumer-facing banking experience and is the first of its kind in Canada.
The in-house program was co-developed by RBC and Toronto-based Borealis AI, an RBC Institute for Research. Red Hat and Nvidia also partnered with RBC to launch the platform.
RBC says the platform has already helped minimize client calls and speed up the delivery of products.
The system is also capable of analyzing more than 13 million client records in under 20 minutes.

Analysis

The Royal Bank of Canada is expanding its digital toolkit, partnering with Borealis AI to develop an in-house AI-driven private cloud computing platform that will improve customer insights and product delivery.

The platform, which RBC announced on Thursday, will help RBC with modeling for customer service, fraud, risk, and financial advice. RBC will have the ability to run simulations and determine behavior, and now with the platform, is able to analyze more than 13 million client records in under 20 minutes. Additionally, the platform enables the processing of transaction sequences at a speed of less than one millisecond each.

Red Hat OpenShift and NVIDIA’s DGX AI computing systems also help power the private cloud system.

“Modern AI cannot exist without access to high-performance computing,” says Foteini Agrafioti, Chief Science Officer at RBC and head of Borealis AI. “This collaboration means that we can conduct research at scale, and deploy machine learning applications in production with improved efficiency and speed to market.”

According to RBC, the platform has already allowed the bank to minimize client calls and more quickly deliver applications to customers.

The platform, which is the first of its kind in Canada, will help RBC more dynamically keep pace with industry technology changes and shifting customer expectations. It could potentially benefit the AI industry in Canada and beyond, even outside of the banking and financial industries.

RBC has a lot of experience with AI technology already—in 2017, the bank launched two NOMI digital services that utilize AI to predict trends and recognize unusual activity and potential savings opportunities within a client’s bank account.