REG-TCS Group Holding PLC Tinkoff introduces Oleg, the world's first voice assistant for financial and lifestyle tasks

TCS HoldingAnnouncement

13/06/2019 07:45

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   TCS Group Holding PLC (TCS)
   Tinkoff introduces Oleg, the world's first voice assistant for financial
   and lifestyle tasks

   13-Jun-2019 / 09:43 MSK
   Dissemination of a Regulatory Announcement, transmitted by EQS Group.
   The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

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   Tinkoff introduces Oleg, the world's first voice assistant for financial
   and lifestyle tasks

   Limassol, Cyprus - 13 June 2019. TCS Group Holding PLC (TCS LI) (the
   "Group"), Russia's leading provider of online retail financial and
   lifestyle services via its Tinkoff.ru financial ecosystem, today
   introduces Оleg, the world's first voice assistant created in Russia for
   finance and lifestyle-related tasks. His mission is to help users navigate
   within the Tinkoff ecosystem, make customers' lives simpler and become a
   friend who is always nearby.

   Oleg is the first voice assistant built by a financial institution as a
   proprietary solution. Oleg lives in the Tinkoff mobile app and is able to
   recognise and interpret different user commands, ask follow-up questions,
   solve problems and speak on a variety of topics. Oleg will help customers
   use their voices to manage all the key financial and lifestyle services in
   the Tinkoff ecosystem.  

   In its first version, Oleg will be able to:

     • Transfer money to accounts at Tinkoff Bank and Sberbank
     • Make restaurant reservations
     • Book beauty salon appointments
     • Buy cinema tickets with a cashback offer of 15%
     • Search for discounts on products and services
     • Converse on various topics
     • Give useful advice and lifehacks from the Tinkoff Journal
     • Consult on banking and stocks
     • Manage financial products (debit and credit cards)
     • Change personal information in the Tinkoff ecosystem
     • Request and email documents (such as bank statements for embassies)

    

   In the future, Oleg will become even more capable and integrated into all
   the elements of the Tinkoff ecosystem, including travel, mobile,
   investments, insurance, entertainment, business and Tinkoff Junior.

   Oleg will also be able to identify a user's voice using biometric data and
   carry out commands that currently require authorisation within the Tinkoff
   app. This will enable users to carry out such tasks as transferring money
   while driving a car.

   Oleg is set to solve the majority of customer issues automatically. He
   will also be able to use some help from call centre staff to resolve the
   issues he can't solve alone. 

   Oleg is training and learning using  1 Tinkoff's supercomputer (the
   Kolmogorov cluster) capacities, one of Russia's most powerful
   supercomputers. With the help of the voice assistant the Tinkoff team will
   be able to increase the speed with which it trains the neural networks for
   speech recognition and synthesis, natural language processing and
   open-ended conversation.

    

   Deep neural network models and voice technologies, which Tinkoff has been
   working with since 2014 within its AI First strategy, were used to create
   Oleg. In 2016, Tinkoff has begun work on its own voice recognition
   technology. This technology works equally well with noisy speech received
   via phone channels and clear speech from high-quality sources. Currently,
   this voice recognition technology allows Tinkoff to correctly identify up
   to 95% of spoken words and uses terabytes of data and tens of thousands of
   hours of human speech to continue to train and improve this technology. In
   2017, Tinkoff launched its own biometric system, which makes the right
   decision in 99.99% of cases. In 2018, Tinkoff became the first vendor bank
   of the Unified biometric system in voice biometrics. That same year
   Tinkoff began developing its own voice synthesis technology, based on
   neural models such as WaveNet, Tacotron and Deep Voice. This allowed
   synthesised speech to come as close as possible to human speech.

    

   Voice technology isn't just for the voice assistant. It also enhances
   Tinkoff automate customer service processes. Voice recognition technology
   helps field around one million calls, while a biometric system, trained on
   customer voice data, helps the call centre combat fraud.

    

    

   For enquiries:
                                 Tinkoff Bank
   Tinkoff Bank
                                 Larisa Chernysheva
   Darya Ermolina                IR Department
   Head of PR
                                 + 7 495 648-10-00 (ext. 2312)
   + 7 495 648-10-00 (ext. 2009)
                                  3 ir@tinkoff.ru
    2 d.ermolina@tinkoff.ru
                                  

   About the Group

   TCS Group Holding PLC is an innovative provider of online retail financial
   services. It includes Tinkoff Bank, mobile virtual network operator
   Tinkoff Mobile, Tinkoff Insurance, and Tinkoff Software DC, a network of
   development hubs in major Russian cities. The Group also has Tinkoff.ru,
   an evolving ecosystem that offers financial and lifestyle services.

   The Group was founded in 2006 by Russian entrepreneur Oleg Tinkov and has
   been listed on the London Stock Exchange since October 2013.

   The Group's key business is Tinkoff Bank, the country's first and only
   direct bank and the core of the Tinkoff.ru ecosystem.

   Tinkoff Bank is the second largest player in the Russian credit card
   market, with a share of 12.4% as of 1 April 2019. The 1Q'19 IFRS net
   income of TCS Group Holding PLC amounted to RUB 7.2 bn, ROE stands at
   64.4%.

   With no branches, the Group serves all its customers remotely via online
   channels and a cloud-based call centre staffed by over 10,000 employees,
   which makes it one of the largest in Europe. To ensure smooth delivery of
   the Group's products, the Group has a nationwide network of over 2,500
   representatives.

   In 2018 Global Finance named Tinkoff Bank the world's Best Consumer
   Digital Bank, in 2018, 2016 and 2015, the Best Consumer Digital Bank in
   Russia, and in 2017 and 2013 The Banker recognised it as the Bank of the
   Year in Russia. The bank's mobile app has been consistently praised by
   local and global independent experts as the best of its kind (in 2013,
   2014, 2015, 2016 by Deloitte and in 2018 by Global Finance).

    

   Forward-looking statements

   Some of the information in this announcement may contain projections or
   other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future
   financial performance of the Group and Tinkoff Bank. You can identify
   forward looking statements by terms such as "expect", "believe",
   "anticipate", "estimate", "intend", "will", "could," "may" or "might", the
   negative of such terms or other similar expressions. The Group and Tinkoff
   Bank wish to caution you that these statements are only predictions and
   that actual events or results may differ materially. The Group and Tinkoff
   Bank do not intend to update these statements to reflect events and
   circumstances occurring after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence
   of unanticipated events. Many factors could cause the actual results to
   differ materially from those contained in projections or forward-looking
   statements of the Group and Tinkoff Bank, including, among others, general
   economic conditions, the competitive environment, risks associated with
   operating in Russia, rapid technological and market change in the
   industries the Group operates in, as well as many other risks specifically
   related to the Group, Tinkoff Bank and their respective operations.

    

    

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   ISIN:          US87238U2033
   Category Code: PRL
   TIDM:          TCS
   LEI Code:      549300XQRN9MR54V1W18
   Sequence No.:  10012
   EQS News ID:   823791


    
   End of Announcement EQS News Service

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References

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   2. mailto:d.ermolina@tinkoff.ru
   3. mailto:ir@tcsbank.ru


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