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Hitachi and Hyakugo Bank's Innovative AI Initiative

In a significant step towards modernizing banking operations, Hyakugo Bank, alongside Hitachi, is set to implement groundbreaking AI technologies and generative AI agents in their banking processes starting in the 2026 fiscal year. This initiative aims to alleviate workforce dependency in crucial tasks such as verifying customer identification documents and inputting data from various forms into internal systems, particularly in the domain of home loans.

Understanding the Problem

Traditionally, tasks like pre-screening home loans required bank staff to manually input information from various documents, including property drawings and materials that came in different formats. This often led to time-consuming processes where bank employees spent hours ensuring that the entered data aligned with the application requirements. The initiative set forth by Hyakugo Bank and Hitachi seeks to automate and streamline these repetitive tasks, allowing bank employees to focus on the crucial last checks and decisions rather than the mundane data entry.

During a trial period from August 2025 to February 2026, focusing on home loan processing, the teams successfully shortened the average time spent per transaction from approximately 20 minutes to under 7 minutes—about a third of the previous time. Additionally, the AI-generated outputs consistently demonstrated high-quality results, which has facilitated the gradual integration of this technology into Hyakugo Bank's operations regarding home loan pre-screenings.

Restructuring Resources

By adopting this new approach, the collaboration aims to enhance the effectiveness of bank employees by reallocating their resources towards higher-value tasks, such as customer proposals and consultative roles. The integration of AI is expected to bring about standardized outputs, which in turn should bolster the revenue capabilities of Hyakugo Bank while simultaneously improving the quality of their services.

On Hitachi's side, they plan to enrich their Branch in Mobile Service, which connects online banking with physical services like ATMs, by incorporating these generative AI and AI agents within the same fiscal year. This technology aims to assist various financial institutions in overcoming workforce reliance and enables significant business reforms.

Contextual Background

In the financial sector, the push for digital transformation (DX) has made significant strides, yet many manual data entry tasks remain—especially in document processing from clients or external organizations. Although there have been improvements with AI-OCR (Optical Character Recognition) for standard forms, irregular documents still rely heavily on manual entry and checks, creating a bottleneck in operations and introducing potential for human error.

Hyakugo Bank has maintained a leading position among regional financial institutions regarding the increase in home loan amounts for seven consecutive years, demonstrating a commitment to improving its processes. The financial institution is leveraging its strengths by optimizing workflows further, aiming to shift human resources to areas that provide greater added value, thereby enhancing service quality and revenue.

A Collaborative Approach

Both Hyakugo Bank and Hitachi have established this collaboration to promote DX throughout banking operations. Previously, Hyakugo Bank adopted Hitachi's Branch in Mobile Service to drive non-face-to-face transactions while also advocating for paperless interactions during in-person visits. Now, they are taking a further step by utilizing generative AI and AI agents for more capabilities within home loan processing.

Key Points of the Initiative

1. Automation of Data Entry Tasks: By using generative AI, the bank will automate the data entry process for non-standard documents. This streamlines and reduces human effort, allowing employees to focus on validating AI-generated outcomes.

2. Autonomous Validation: AI agents will be employed to analyze data consistency and validate entries post-input. This will eliminate the inconsistencies caused by variations in employee skills and judgment when performing these checks.

Future Directions

Looking ahead, Hyakugo Bank and Hitachi plan to extend this collaboration beyond just home loan processing. The strategic deployment of generative AI and AI agents will also cater to various banking functions, enhancing overall efficiency. This transition aims to free up bank employees for consulting roles that ultimately improve customer experiences and address regional challenges.

Hitachi's commitment to deploying these transformative AI technologies by adding them to their Branch in Mobile Service package represents a future-focused approach to banking operations, promising thorough automation and improving industry standards.

By realizing these goals, both companies are contributing not only to their operational improvements but also to the broader societal goal of creating more efficient financial infrastructures through innovations like HMAX by Hitachi.