At the 13th International Research Symposium in Service Management (IRSSM13), held at Ravenala Attitude Hotel from 15–18 July 2025, Sandeep Mohapatra, Director – Digital Transformation and Technology at Absa Bank (Mauritius) Limited, took the stage to deliver a thought-provoking perspective on the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in service-led economies like Mauritius.
With the theme “Leveraging AI in the Mauritian Service Industry”, the symposium convened top leaders from finance, ICT, healthcare, and education sectors to reflect on how AI can elevate - not replace human value in an increasingly digital world.
Pattern matching to pattern breaking: How AI is rewiring banking
Sandeep opened his session by posing a fundamental question: “Are we truly ready for the AI revolution?”
In a world where service is Mauritius' superpower, he challenged the audience to reimagine AI not as a tool of automation, but of elevation - helping us shape more personal stories of growth for our customers, colleagues, and communities.
Drawing on real examples from Absa’s journey, he explained that AI’s core strength lies in pattern recognition - the ability to identify insights from both structured and unstructured data at scale. When combined with human intuition and experience, this leads to faster, smarter decisions that transform banking from the inside out.
From reactive to predictive: AI in action at Absa Mauritius
Absa Mauritius has been at the forefront of AI adoption, with innovations that go beyond the buzzwords. Sandeep shared how AI already powers many of the bank’s flagship digital experiences:
- Abby, launched in 2019, was Mauritius’ first AI-powered digital personal banker - enabling swift self-service and conversational banking.
- Absa Digi Account and Digi Loan: industry-first 100% digital products that use facial and voice recognition, document intelligence, and machine learning to automate onboarding and credit decisioning.
- Advanced fraud detection: AI models continuously monitor for anomalies in transaction behaviour, linking entities and networks in real time to prevent financial crime.
- Sanctions screening, behavioural analytics, and adaptive learning systems reduce false positives and increase detection accuracy, creating safer experiences across all channels.
These implementations aren’t just about efficiency - they create real moments of value for clients: zero paperwork, zero queues, and 24/7 access to financial tools on any device.
"Your Story Matters": A digital strategy grounded in human value
“AI isn’t here to take away jobs,” Sandeep noted.
“It’s here to take away the robot out of the human, so we can focus on what really matters - relationships, trust, and long-term impact.”
True to Absa’s brand promise - Your Story Matters - Absa’s digital strategy is built around three pillars:
1. Customer Story: Faster. Simpler. Smarter.
- Fully digital onboarding, zero balance and fee-free accounts
- Access anytime, anywhere, on any device
- Secure, biometric-first experiences
2. Colleague Story: From manual to meaningful
- Less admin, more human touch
- AI-powered decision support
- Improved work-life harmony through smarter automation
3. Community Story: Inclusion, innovation, integrity
- Expanded access via mobile-first, multilingual platforms
- Zero-paper, cloud-first sustainability
- Enhanced digital trust through proactive monitoring
Beyond automation: The birth of agentic AI
Looking ahead, Sandeep highlighted how the next frontier of AI is moving from insight to orchestration driven by Agentic AI, where intelligent systems act autonomously across platforms.
He introduced the ReAct agentic model, where AI doesn’t just understand complex queries, but takes informed action:
“Imagine asking: ‘Rebalance my portfolio based on my risk profile and market trends.’
Agentic AI can process this end-to-end from historical data analysis, web searches, and personalisation to triggering actual transactions.”
This shift reflects a broader transformation in AI towards systems that "Think fast" for routine decisions (programmatic AI), and "Think slow" for complex reasoning (LLMs and agents).
Embrace for Impact
Sandeep closed with a choice for the audience: “We can brace for impact… or embrace it.”
At Absa, the choice is clear. With purposeful innovation, ethical design, and deep local insight, the bank continues to pioneer how AI can empower people - not replace them in building a more inclusive, digitally fluent future for Mauritius.
