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

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 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.

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.