Getting Hands-On with AI at OCBC's Community of Practice
How we ran an immersive AI Community of Practice masterclass at OCBC with NTUC LearningHub, keeping strategic judgement firmly human.
🤖🧠 True learning flourishes when professionals step out of their comfort zone and actively shape the technology meant to enhance their work.
We were given the opportunity to work with our strategic partners at NTUC LearningHub (shoutout to Persis C., Vasanth Elangovan), to design and implement an experiential and immersive AI Community of Practice Demo Day masterclass for the AI community at OCBC (as part of their Fr-AI-yay series 🙂).
Our goal was never simply to showcase the latest software tools. We wanted to support a space where their team could bridge the gap between abstract concepts in artificial intelligence and everyday operational excellence.
What we witnessed at the OCBC Campus was an organisation operating at the absolute forefront of corporate innovation. The forward-looking culture within OCBC is not just a strategic statement; it is a lived reality driven by leaders who deeply value human-centric growth.
The energy in the room was vibrant and palpable as this cohort dove into an intensive, rapid round-robin exhibition across four experiential learning booths. Instead of passively watching presentations, participants gathered closely around hacking it out at computer terminals, others engaged through their phones, completely immersed in getting their hands dirty with real-world applications.
The OCBC team explored advanced large language model platforms, embedded systems, and the frontier of workflow automation as well as agentic AI. They practiced grounding AI outputs strictly within verified source documents to eliminate algorithmic hallucinations, and stress-tested live pipelines designed to automate repetitive, high-volume data journeys.
The learning objective was not about absolute machine autonomy, but sustainable long-term efficiency where strategic steering and final judgement stay firmly human.
The day culminated in a deeply insightful reflection led by the group’s people leaders (Aye Wee Yap, Eileen Nah, Jo Lee), who contextualised these new digital fluencies within the bank’s broader operational strategies and long-term talent roadmap.
Seeing their leadership team look past the noise of digital transformation to focus entirely on practical mechanics that drive genuine stakeholder value was inspiring. It reinforces exactly why OCBC continues to lead the region in cultivating future-ready talent.
Finally, a big thank you once again to our strategic partner NTUC LearningHub and its leadership (Ee Learn Tay, Joe Loy and also Yew Hoe Loh) for their fervent support and collaboration in delivering a programme that equips professionals to confidently architect the future of financial services.
