Case Study: Nedbank achieves 80% inquiry automation at 10% of live‑agent cost with Microsoft Azure

This bank is mastering what it sees as the next market disrupter in global financial services

Nedbank, one of South Africa’s largest banks operating across seven African countries, needed to scale personalized service for individual investors without ballooning costs. Customers preferred convenient call‑center and messaging channels over websites or apps, so the bank’s challenge was to replicate that one‑to‑one interaction in channels clients already use while reducing service costs and freeing staff to handle complex cases.

Working with NML and Microsoft, Nedbank built EVA, an Electronic Virtual Assistant on the Microsoft Bot Framework, Azure LUIS and Cognitive Services. A prototype launched in three months and full production in under four; EVA now handles 80% of the inquiries it’s programmed for at about 10% of the cost of live agents, prepopulates forms, hands conversations to humans when needed, improves answer consistency, and is being expanded to messaging apps, transactions and other business lines.

Nedbank

Steven Goodrich

Head of Technology