Singapore's OCBC Bank has launched a generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) training programme for its 900 wealth advisors in Singapore, in a bid to improve sales performance and client engagements.
The six-month training programme, which OCBC touted as a first of its kind for a bank in Singapore, uses large language models to simulate realistic customer scenarios. This allows advisors to hone their pitches and advisory skills on their work devices at their own pace, rather than waiting weeks for a supervisor's availability.
Within the first three months of its implementation, wealth advisors who went through the training secured twice as many weekly client appointments as peers who had not yet used the programme. They also recorded a 50% uplift in revenue compared with the three months prior.
Previously, skills training was conducted in-person and one-on-one. Because supervisors have to juggle their own duties while coaching up to 10 staff members, wealth advisors could wait up to three weeks just to secure a training session. This traditional method also risked inconsistent evaluation standards and feedback quality across different managers.
The Technology Behind the Training
Developed over 12 months, the programme uses the bank's anonymised proprietary data on customer behaviour to generate dynamic, lifelike role play scenarios. The AI responds naturally to the advisor, mimicking a real client looking to build a long-term investment portfolio, identify their risk profile, or adjust strategies amid market movements. The system removes the emotional bias of human-led coaching while ensuring that all advisors are consistently trained to meet strict regulatory and professional standards.
Each simulated session is followed by a GenAI gap-analysis report delivered to supervisors. This report details the advisor's competency levels and highlights specific areas for improvement, enabling managers to deliver highly targeted, in-person coaching to close those skills gaps. Sunny Quek, OCBC's head of global consumer financial services, explained that the programme helps advisors quickly grasp complex product knowledge and financial industry regulations.
“In wealth management, these experiences are especially crucial because advisory requires empathy, judgement and trust – qualities that only human advisors can bring,” said Quek. “By marrying AI precision with the human touch, we ensure our advisors are not just well-trained, but future-ready for customers' growing sophistication in their wealth management needs.”
Impact on Advisors and Customer Service
For advisors on the ground, the flexibility of the tool has been a major draw. Ng Zuolin, an OCBC wealth advisor, shared that the platform has accelerated her learning curve since entering the banking industry. “With the GenAI training programme, I can practice the scenarios on my own, and as many times as possible, to pick up wealth advisory skills more quickly to serve customers better,” she said. “Plus, with the feedback from the GenAI training, my supervisor can identify my weaknesses and help me tackle them faster during our in-person training sessions.”
OCBC's wealth advisors serve a broad spectrum of retail banking customers, ranging from personal banking clients with assets under management (AUM) of under S$350,000 to Private Premier clients with AUM exceeding S$1.5 million. The ability to train consistently across such diverse customer segments is a key advantage of the AI-driven platform.
The programme's success has prompted the bank to plan a rollout to its markets in Malaysia and Hong Kong at a later stage. The training content, customer scenarios and learning pathways will be localised to reflect specific regulatory requirements, products and customer behaviours in those jurisdictions. This expansion underscores the scalability of generative AI in financial services training.
Broader Implications for Wealth Management
The adoption of GenAI for advisor training reflects a broader trend in the financial industry, where banks are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to enhance both customer experience and operational efficiency. Unlike traditional e-learning modules, this approach offers an interactive, adaptive learning environment that closely mirrors real-world interactions. It also addresses a critical pain point in wealth management: the time and cost associated with manual coaching.
Generative AI's ability to generate realistic dialogues and scenarios using proprietary data allows institutions to maintain high standards of compliance and personalisation. In a sector where trust and accuracy are paramount, such technology can reduce human error and ensure that every advisor receives the same high-quality training, regardless of which supervisor they are assigned to.
Other financial institutions in the region are also exploring similar tools. For example, some banks in Singapore and Malaysia have begun piloting AI-driven role-play for call centre staff, while others focus on automating compliance training. However, OCBC's initiative stands out for its scale, duration, and direct impact on revenue metrics.
The results from the first three months are compelling: a doubling of client appointments and a 50% revenue uplift suggest that the training is not only effective but also translates quickly into business outcomes. This data-driven validation is likely to encourage further investment in generative AI across the organisation.
Looking ahead, the integration of GenAI into wealth advisor training could evolve to include real-time coaching during actual client meetings, using voice analysis and sentiment detection. While such applications raise privacy and regulatory considerations, they represent the next frontier in human-AI collaboration in financial services. For now, OCBC has set a benchmark that other banks in ASEAN and beyond may follow, as they seek to equip their workforce for an increasingly digital and customer-centric era.
Source: ComputerWeekly.com News