About Hannah Gould
Experience Design Director, Absa Personal and Private Banking
Hannah Gould is an Experience Design Director at Absa Personal and Private Banking, where she leads design teams behind the bank’s virtual assistant, Abby, and the award-winning ChatWallet. With her strategic thinking, she plays a key role in solving some of the bank's most complex challenges, including fraud prevention and ID&V.
At heart, Hannah is passionate about developing young talent. Herself a product of Absa's Design Graduate programme, she now runs it, mentoring and growing the next generation of innovators within the South African design community.
Talk topic
Designing AI with Purpose: Principles from Abby’s Journey
In this talk, the team shares the behind-the-scenes journey of the Absa Abby AI Assistant. From humble beginnings as a glorified FAQ bot, Abby is transforming into a sophisticated AI agent capable of understanding context, handling complex queries, and delivering real value to customers.
As Abby’s intelligence matured, her capabilities were scaled across channels, culminating in innovations like ChatWallet, a digital wallet built inside WhatsApp that expanded financial accessibility and broke down barriers to traditional banking.
More recently, the team has been actively exploring the power of agentic AI and what it can unlock for customer experience, operational efficiency, and commercial value. Throughout Abby’s evolution, the principles of building trust and the shift of data privacy beyond just a policy into a core part of the customer experience remain central, shaping every design decision.
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