Chatbot for banking and financial services industry has been one of the forerunners in the adoption of A.I. for automation of back-office processes — from eliminating paper trials to ramping up security protocols, the array of enterprise use cases for chatbots are limitless. According to McKinsey Global Institute’s 2018 automation research report, many activities in the financial services industry can be automated — 42 percent can be fully automated, and 19 percent mostly automated — and have been with significant success.

For the operational side, chatbots can offer the following benefits:

Enhancing end-user experience and satisfaction

Retrieving relevant information more rapidly

Increasing compliance across team processes

Reducing costs by adopting self-service practices

Chatbots are disrupting the financial services industry and the following six processes will benefit from A.I.-powered chatbot assistants:

1. Customer engagement

One of the most common use cases of chatbots in the financial services industry has been to increase customer engagement. After sufficient iterations and machine learning, the bots can become personalised and respond to customer’s questions – from account opening concerns to executing transactional requests. The chatbot offers an entire suite of functions all rolled into one convenient platform that users can access at any time of the day, doesn’t rest regardless of the volume of queries or requests, and makes product recommendations.

Since the entire conversation takes place via messaging, it can benefit those who’d rather get help with financial difficulties from a bot for general queries, and communicate with a customer service officer for more transaction-specific requests. Recommendations also tend to appear less forced and can even be tailored to each individual based on their query types, resulting in a higher likelihood of the product being taken up.

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2. Stock management

When it comes to big data and pattern recognition, A.I.-powered applications provide the most advanced tools for acquiring and applying business intelligence. Game-changing tools that can produce predictive analytics are being embraced by analysts, investors and other key players in their stock management workflows. With chatbots, users can leverage on these functions via a conversational interface — making the interactions natural and seamless.

The greatest benefit here is that A.I. eliminates any room for human error, and enables managers to be better informed when investing their clients’ money. By allowing the bot to take over and automate the error-prone and repetitive tasks, human agents can expend more resources on higher-value tasks. Overall, this will undoubtedly increase opportunities for the underbanked to gain greater financial access, minimize fraud and mitigate investment risks. Its potential to not only revolutionize the industry, but also to improve the financial health of millions of people in the US and across the world, is immense.

3. Investment portfolios

As the investment landscape evolves, AI-powered platforms that automate processes within asset management have become increasingly common. The introduction of A.I. advisors will augment the work of current financial advisors in the investment process, such as by cutting down reaction time for repetitive tasks like purchase and management — processes that can be easily automated. The chatbot is also capable of collecting and “learning” information about an investor’s financial objectives and their risk appetite, which can then be input into algorithms that could potentially be processed into advice and actionables. With all this data, the investor is augmented in his/her functions, being able to make better and informed investment decisions while utilising the bot to execute purchase of investments.

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4. Fraud detection & risk management

A.I.-powered tools have evolved to a stage where it can detect fraud before it happens by reviewing each transaction in every portfolio meticulously and in a way that is suitable for each specific bank’s practices. This is a task that might have taken its own employees a much longer period of time to organise and detect. Chatbots can provide assistance in ordering and retrieving data in a way that can be easily reviewed for potential fraud. An alert may be sent to ping all relevant staff if suspicious activities have been detected, enabling banks to adopt a prevention over cure approach, and giving customers the peace of mind that their accounts are in the bank’s good hands.

5. Regulatory compliance

Security has become a top priority as more financial services transition onto a digital platform. For many financial institutions, however, keeping up with the constant regulatory standards can be challenging and time-consuming. With a chatbot that can “learn” and dispense information about all applicable policies as they change, whether it be the latest KYC or anti-money laundering regulations to asset management and GDPR, this ensures that financial institutions operate at the highest compliance standards, greatly boosting the efficiency of their workflows. The conversational data that the chatbot collects may also aid in identifying patterns in areas of compliance that your team may need more assistance in.

6. Onboarding new personnel

Yes, you read that right. Beyond just customers, chatbots can be a great tool for taking over the repetitive tasks that usually come with onboarding new personnel. Whether it be general questions related to certain industry terms and policies, or specific ones about company policies — a chatbot can help your team field and manage large volumes of queries. The result is a team that operates at a greater capacity and eliminates inefficiencies in the workflows. The bot can also collect and store the data into a database that users can easily retrieve information from, greatly simplifying the task of manually filing and extracting of information — a task many staff in financial institutions face.