One of Canada’s largest banks is leveraging its artificial intelligence (AI) platform to automate sales pitches to customers.

Scotiabank last week debuted C. Mee, pronounced “see me,” a new tool designed to improve the customer experience, and approximately 10 million Canadian retail banking customers are now engaging with the tool. C. Mee leverages the $926 billion Scotiabank’s global AI platform, launched in November 2020, along with big data to provide automatic personalized service and sales messages to customers. The tool automatically connects with customers in the way they typically interact with the bank, tailoring the channel in which the bank delivers personalized messages. For example, a customer who primarily uses the app to connect to the bank will receive targeted messaging within the app.

The $926 billion Scotiabank is Canada’s third-largest bank by deposits and market capitalization, which is $68.7 billion, according to Google Finance. The largest bank by asset size, $3 trillion RBC, last spring launched a similar personalization effort. And in November 2020, the second-largest by asset size, $1.4 trillion TD Bank announced a similar tool on the horizon called MyTD, that would also offer more personalized financial advice, but it did not have a release date at that time.

C. Mee mimics a similar marketing approach used by technology giants. It determines what interests customers, then pushes bank offerings on the platform to those who interact most with it, said Phil Thomas, Scotiabank executive vice president of customer insights, data and analytics.

Although Thomas didn’t specify which technology giants he was referring to, Google and Facebook are well known for their use of AI and data to automatically push notifications on their platforms about products related to a user’s search history, or offerings based on topics they may have mentioned in a social media post.

“We’re able to run complex machine learning models and artificial intelligence; that gives us a better view of what our customers are doing, how they’re behaving,” Thomas said. “So we’re providing more relevant offers and solutions to them.” This is just one of the ways Scotiabank is using its AI platform, Thomas said. The Toronto-based bank is also using it to drive automation in its call center and back office, he added.

C. Mee is currently only available in Canada, but the plan is to eventually roll it out to Latin America, where Scotiabank has a large presence, Thomas said.

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