How Shinhan Bank uses AI

Shinhan Bank, in South Korea, put a real time AI interpretation service on the video consultation digital desks of its branches in March 2026, starting with three branches and extending it to 61 branches within weeks. A foreign customer speaks their own language, the service shows the customer's words and the consultant's reply as subtitles in the other language, and the consultant handles about 80 counter tasks in 10 languages.

The bank reports that a counter task now takes less time than through its earlier foreign customer call center, which relied on a three party call with an interpreter: opening an account takes about 26 minutes, 18.8 percent less, and the bank says the time for customers who do not speak Korean falls by up to 50 percent. About 30 foreign customers a day use the service.

The bank had piloted an earlier AI interpretation system in August 2024 and ended it in December 2024 before rebuilding it on the digital desk channel. It planned to extend the service to all 182 branches.

Shinhan Bank introduced a generative AI "Credit Review Support Agent" for corporate lending that analyzes a borrower's company profile, financial information and industry trends together with loan application details, recent purchase and sales flow, collateral recovery value, banking relationship and technology competitiveness. It runs the analysis on the bank's own accumulated corporate credit knowhow and data rather than the large language model alone, with a dedicated analysis engine tuned to twelve major industries, and gives branch staff the consolidated information they need to write the credit opinion report.

Shinhan Bank, in South Korea, put an AI Banker, a conversational digital human, on the video consultation "digital desks" of its unmanned Digital Lounge branches from September 2021. At the desks it handles dozens of consultation tasks, such as opening deposit and savings accounts and taking credit loan applications, and hands the customer to a remote staff member over video when it cannot finish a task.

In June 2024 Shinhan raised the task list from 56 to 64, added debit card, security card and certificate issuing, and extended the AI Banker to smart kiosks, where it guides customers who are not used to operating them. A July 2024 version uses five real branch employees as models, generative AI for the voice, and covers guidance on about 70 tasks at the kiosks. Shinhan said it had about 150 digital desks in branches nationwide in June 2024.

No results such as share of tasks completed or customer satisfaction have been published.