Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. (NRI), a leading provider of consulting services and system solutions, today announced a successful integration of new technology into the call monitoring operation of Mizuho Securities Co., Ltd. The integration was completed in November of 2017 following a successful proof of concept stage in 2016.

The integration combines NRI’s voice recognition and AI technologies to optimize Mizuho’s processes for monitoring and analyzing communication between investors and sales reps, which are tracked for both compliance purposes and better customer care.

The voice recognition and AI-enabled systems that have been implemented are developed from NRI’s “TRAINA VOICE Digest” and customized for Mizuho’s specific needs. The system learns with a vast collection of conversation data, using summary rules of conversations and monitoring checklist/guideline for machine learning. At the end of the process the system extracts and shows the parts of conversations that need to be monitored.

As part of the initial push to optimize this monitoring process, Mizuho chose NRI to conduct PoC at the end of 2016. NRI’s system converted the phone conversations into texts with voice recognition technology, analyzed the texts with AI, and extracted essence to be monitored. The result of the PoC showed that NRI’s system achieved significant reduction in monitoring time, and Mizuho decided to implement the system officially.

“Voice recognition is the latest component in a string of demand for AI technology integration that NRI is seeing from some of the most prominent banks in the world,” says Masaaki Yamazaki, Managing Director of NRI. “Demand continues to increase for AI solutions to traditional financial services operations, and NRI works to make sure that we are at the forefront of research and application of AI for the industry.”