BankUnited Enhances Customer and Employee Satisfaction for SMB Banking Using AWS

Cultivating service-oriented relationships is central to BankUnited’s core mission. As such, the company wanted to help its employees more effectively surface information from its policy and procedures system, which consists of approximately 400 documents.

So, BankUnited turned to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build an AI application: SAVI. "The seamless integration of AWS services streamlined our development process,” says Jhon Pereda, AVP BI and analytics manager at BankUnited. “We combined powerful tools and services without the usual complexities of integrating multiple platforms. Our team could focus on building SAVI's functionality rather than wrestling with technical issues."

With SAVI, employees can phrase their questions naturally while getting reliable responses. “SAVI is most helpful when you need to find an answer fast while with a client,” says Shannon Stinson, assistant branch leader at BankUnited.

Using Anthropic’s Claude 2 model in Amazon Bedrock, BankUnited achieved an accuracy rate of 95 percent and response times of less than 10 seconds. The bank also adopted Amazon Kendra, an intelligent enterprise search service, to help its employees quickly find information.   

“We made locating information a lot more straightforward and less frustrating,” says Jeiner Morales, senior vice president and director of operations at BankUnited. “It also reduces the training life cycle of the employees.”

Empowering its employees has had downstream effects. “Having access to the right information is extremely important to us,” says Morales. “Our employees can be the advisers that our clients expect and want.”

Thanks to SAVI, BankUnited can reallocate human resources toward value-added tasks. “SAVI provides us with the insight needed to quickly clarify our existing procedures,” says Ellen Howes, AVP consumer small business team lead at BankUnited. “The volume of calls and emails regarding procedural questions is lower because our front line can quickly get the answer by asking SAVI.”

The application has also helped the company shift from a traditional support team to a 24/7 self-service model at a fraction of the cost. “The implementation of SAVI has been a game changer for our frontline employees and customers,” says Lisa Shim, senior executive vice president of technology and innovation at BankUnited. “We’re thrilled with the results and look forward to expanding the use of generative AI across other areas of our business.”

BankUnited has rolled out an initiative, “OpportunitiAI,” to help identify other generative AI use cases and align its business divisions. “This solution proved the technology for us,” says Morales. “It is showcasing the art of the possible.”