Bank of Ireland ‘accelerating’ AI’s role in fraud detection and financial guidance

Bank of Ireland is “accelerating” its implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) across its services, with the new technology now embedded in the bank’s fraud detection software and providing customers with financial wellbeing insights.“It’s a very exciting development,” said Prag Sharma, Bank of Ireland’s chief AI officer since October 1st. “I’ve noticed a real drive within the organisation, from top down and bottom up, to adopt this technology in a safe way.”He continued: “We’re seeing this transformation across many aspects of how we do business today,” given the bank’s “rich ecosystem in the Microsoft base”.“A lot of good stuff has already happened and I now need to accelerate that across the board in a safe manner,” Sharma said.READ MORERecent developments attributed to AI’s role in automating processes include “circa 2.9 million customer transactions” being assessed by “AI-powered scam detection technology”, Bank of Ireland said in a statement.The value of reported fraudulent financial transactions conducted in the State has increased in recent years, rising from €141 million in 2024 to €179 million in 2025, according to data from the Central Bank of Ireland. Last year’s statistics represented approximately one in every 10,000 payments made.Why is motor insurance so expensive in Ireland?Bank of Ireland pointed to its “benefits finder” tool, a service that uses generative artificial intelligence to help customers identify potential tax credits, according to the disclaimer that appears on screen before accessing the site.Launched in April, the benefits finder has been used 31,000 times and identified €55 million in potential tax refunds to service users, the company said.“We use machine learning with data, both internal and external, to make sense of the data for our end users,” Sharma said. Its developers have “spent a lot of time and effort to ensure we have it right”, conducting “a lot of testing around it”, he added.[ Bank of Ireland invests €10m in ‘tech-for-good’ fundOpens in new window ]Bank of Ireland, which employed nearly 11,000 people in 2023 and is the country’s largest domestic financial institution based on the value of its assets, said almost 7,000 employees have completed training courses on how to effectively utilise AI services such as Microsoft Copilot.This comes “as part of a major roll-out across the bank”, it added, estimating these practices save up to half an hour a day for staff who use the technology in their work.AI-supported services have been credited with “significantly improving the handling of chargebacks”, the process of refunding money when a customer disputes a card transaction. “Over four in five cases are now closed in three days,” the bank said.The technology has also been implemented across the bank’s contact centre, reducing call transfers by more than 40 per cent and providing “127 million AI-powered spending insights” to customers last year, the company said in a statement.