Lloyds Banking Group has built an AI knowledge hub that slashes the time it takes customer-facing employees to answer queries.
The UK banking giant's first major GenAI product, the Athena hub acts as a one-stop knowledge shop of information for customer-facing staffers.
It can scan the 13,000 internal articles that make up Lloyds’ internal knowledge hub for supporting queries on every possible topic a customer could need help with. The tool has reduced the average search time from 59 seconds 20 seconds - a 66% change.
Lloyds says that for its telephone banking teams alone, this will lead to 4000 hours of time spent searching - and customers waiting - saved.
Since the start of 2025, 21,000 employees have used Athena to search 2.1 million times. By the end of the year, the Group aims to introduce Athena to more users in relevant customer support roles, hitting an estimated 40 million searches.
Ranil Boteju, group chief data and analytics officer, Lloyds, says: “Athena is a monumental leap in our digital and strategic evolution, as we harness the power of generative AI to supercharge efficiency and elevate the customer experience. This technology isn’t just an upgrade—it’s a revolution.
"We are freeing up thousands of hours as Athena puts critical information at our colleagues’ fingertips, leaving them free to help our customers with more complex, bespoke needs. The future of work is here, and we’re leading the charge!"
Earlier this year, Lloyds revealed that it was building a new machine learning and GenAI platform using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI. The bank says it expects the technology to bring in at least £50 million in revenue growth and productivity improvements in 2025.