Backbase unveils Intelligence Fabric to boost banking with AI

Backbase has announced a significant enhancement to its Engagement Banking Platform with the introduction of the Intelligence Fabric layer, a set of data and AI infrastructure and development capabilities that are now integrated into the platform. This development aims to allow banks to use data and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve productivity across customer servicing and sales operations.

AI has become an essential element in transforming the banking sector by increasing efficiency, enhancing risk management, and delivering contextual, relevant customer experiences. The newly introduced Intelligence Fabric is expected to help banks navigate these changes effectively. According to Backbase, the platform's new capabilities include Conversational Banking, Customer Lifetime Orchestration, Advanced Financial Insights, and AI-Augmented Customer Support.

The Intelligence Fabric uses Backbase's Grand Central Integration Platform-as-a-Service to bring together data from various sources within a bank's technology ecosystem. These sources include core banking systems, payment gateways, fintech capabilities, and non-fintech systems like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.

Jouk Pleiter, Founder and CEO at Backbase, stated, "Backbase is leading the way with its AI platform capabilities for banking. The introduction of the Intelligence Fabric marks a pivotal moment in our mission to empower banks to harness the power of data and AI at scale. Today, we are making a massive leap forward in unveiling our Agentic AI strategy. We see a future where AI Agents will work autonomously in the background, handling tasks, managing processes, and collaborating with customers and employees. The adoption and evolution of these new-gen, super-powerful agents will dramatically reduce internal and external labour spend on overheads such as sales, marketing, customer service, and compliance operations."

Backbase's new Intelligence Fabric offers a set of high-priority capabilities designed to improve various banking functions. Conversational Banking utilises large language models to handle daily banking tasks such as accessing accounts, making payments, checking transaction histories, and managing cards across digital channels. Customer Lifetime Orchestration employs AI to execute product activation and upsell campaigns tailored to increase the product holding per customer.

Advanced Financial Insights leverages AI and machine learning models to analyse customer data, offering actionable insights like early warning indicators for retail customers and cash-flow forecasting for small and medium-sized enterprises. AI-Augmented Customer Support uses generative AI models to power chatbots, providing instant responses to customer queries while also assisting support teams with insights and suggested replies based on customer sentiment analysis.

Thomas Fuss, Chief Technology Officer at Backbase, commented, "Our Intelligence Fabric is a game-changer for the banking industry. With native AI capabilities embedded directly inside the Backbase platform, we now provide banks with the infrastructure and developer tooling to seamlessly combine data from various sources, create event-driven systems, and adopt or build AI-agents for specific tasks. Banks will remain in full control of their data and can define and monitor all the guardrails to ensure the AI is working within the compliance requirements set by the bank and the regulators."

The Intelligence Fabric's integration capabilities make it possible to create a unified, real-time data source accessible to banks, partners, and vendors. This consolidated data source can facilitate the creation of AI Agents that interpret contextual information and provide personalised responses, handling a range of tasks from simple transactions to complex processes like customer onboarding.