What is Knowledge Management in Banking

Knowledge Management in Banking Defined

Knowledge management (KM) in banking is defined as the process of systematically capturing, curating, sharing, and leveraging knowledge in banking. Within the banking industry, knowledge management is used to improve customer service and decision-making, assist contact center agents, and enhance operations while ensuring regulatory compliance.

With frontline staff often navigating evolving compliance requirements, product proliferation and variations, and sensitive customer data, it’s critical that trusted knowledge is easily captured, continuously curated, and proactively pushed real-time into workflows.

Types of Knowledge in Banking

Knowledge in the context of banking is more than just documents. Here are some examples of artifacts that are considered as knowledge types:

Data:

What is my account number?
What is my balance?
What are the interest rates on savings accounts versus CDs?

Policies:

What are the requirements for waiver of monthly service charges?
Do I get free printed checks for account type X?
What is our credit approval policy for small business loans?

Insights:

Which customer segments showed the highest loan origination volume last quarter?
What customer segments are showing signs of churn or decreased engagement?
What are the signs of impending customer defections?
What % did the $200 bonus offer increase new deposits by in the state of California?

Procedures:

What are the steps for new account onboarding?
How do I dispute a charge?
What are the next steps in my loan process?
How do I add a beneficiary to my account?
What steps do I need to follow to stay compliant with Know Your Customer regulations?

Expertise:

Would you recommend a 15-year ARM or a 30-year fixed rate mortgage given my situation and interest rate trends?
How do I transfer money from an account in bank X in country Y to my domestic account?
Do I need to pay taxes on interest from my overseas account?

Knowledge Management in Banking: Challenges

In banking, effective knowledge management must address unique obstacles such as regulatory complexity, outdated KM systems, and a wide range of customer service scenarios that demand consistent, correct, and compliant responses. Here are just a few of the many challenges that hinder effective knowledge management:

Unprecedented retirement: A record 4.1 million Americans will turn 65 each year through 2027 and banking is no exception. Banks needs to make sure they have modern KM systems in place to capture and leverage their expertise.
Dysfunctional service: Customers often get inconsistent answers across channels, a consequence of fragmented and inconsistent knowledge silos. 44% of respondents said they received inconsistent answers across touchpoints from banks, according to a survey by Dimensional Research.
Limited discoverability: Knowledge—often built over years of experience—may be stored across a patchwork of documents, folders, internal conversation stores, and more. While this information is technically “available,” it is far from accessible. In fast-paced environments like banking, where timeliness and accuracy are critical, the inability to surface trusted knowledge in real time can be detrimental.

How AI Can Help

McKinsey estimates that AI could deliver annual cost savings between $200 billion and $340 billion for the banking industry, primarily through productivity enhancements and operational efficiencies. Here are some of the ways that AI-powered Knowledge is helping banks transform their operations:

Automate Knowledge: AI can help transform the KM process by automating tasks like content creation, identifying frequently asked questions and closing knowledge gaps by analyzing employee and customer queries.
Real-time guidance: Agentic technology backed by trusted content and expertise in a central hub, like eGain’s AI-Agent, can guide agents through complex customer interactions, reducing errors and improving compliance and consistency. Customers who use AI-agent have experienced a 50% reduction in banker and agent onboarding time.
Compliance enforcement: With controls and guardrails around AI, AI knowledge can play a pivotal role by continuously monitoring content for relevance and accuracy. It can automatically flag outdated or duplicate materials, ensuring that employees aren’t relying on obsolete information.
Personalization: AI-powered knowledge ensures that the right information is delivered to the right person at the right time. It intelligently tailors knowledge based on user role, tenure, geographic region, nature of customer query, and more—ensuring that frontline employees, back-office teams, and executives alike receive content that’s relevant and compliant with local regulations or internal policies. For example, an experienced contact center agent may be allowed to take shortcuts while novice agents will be required to take a multi-step approach for handling customer queries.

Knowledge Management in Banking: Best Practices for Success

Here are best practices for deploying successful KM in banking:

Consolidate knowledge into a unified hub: Leverage next gen KM systems to eliminate silos, enhance discoverability, and ensure consistent, structured access across departments.
Use AI-powered knowledge to ensure regulatory readiness: Build in governance workflows for approval, audit trails, compliance sign-offs, and process execution.
Leverage AI for advanced analytics: Use AI to identify gaps, recommend content creation and/or updates, and monitor employee and customer usage patterns while relating usage to outcomes.
Partner with proven vendors: In highly-regulated industries like banking, knowledge management isn’t just about technology—it’s about trust, compliance, and speed. Achieving quick, measurable impact requires partners with deep expertise in KM as it pertains to banking and a proven track record in understanding regulatory demands, customer expectations, and operational complexities.

Knowledge Management in Banking: Success Stories

eGain has helped leading financial institutions leverage AI knowledge for CX and EX (employee experience across contact center agents and retail bankers) transformation:

J.P. Morgan Chase: Using the eGain AI Knowledge Hub, JPMC migrated over 2,500 content artifacts from platforms like SharePoint, intranets, and Salesforce into a modern KM system, streamlining access to trusted information and reducing average handle time for agents by 14%.
Navy Federal Credit Union: NFCU delivers proactive, “wow” experiences to millions of members across digital touchpoints including SMS, email, and mobile by leveraging the eGain Conversation Hub™. The credit union sends over a billion messages annually for proactive service. Deep API integrations also provide agents with a 360-degree customer view, while automated workflows streamline notifications and ensure timely, personalized outreach.

Knowledge Management in Banking: Conclusion

In today’s banking environment, AI-powered knowledge management can empower frontline teams with timely, trusted knowledge, elevating customer service quality, reducing compliance risk, and enabling better, faster decision making.

eGain’s AI-powered knowledge solutions are built to meet the banking sector’s regulatory, operational, and customer-facing challenges. With free pilot programs for both Knowledge Hub and AI-Agent, eGain provides a low-risk way for banks to transform customer service and beyond.