Bank bots may soon be able to file your expenses, warn you of fraud

Photo credit: _sarchi.

Picture this scenario: You are on a two-week long business trip across multiple locations. It’s been five days and you are wondering how much your current trip has cost you already. You tap on your bank’s app on your phone and type in “How much did I spend in New York last week?”

A bot answers “A total of US$343.54” followed by “Would you like to file it under expense?”

You say, yes. It promptly marks it to your expense list to submit to your company and sends you an email report.

You follow up by asking “What’s the status of that loan disbursement? The bot answers, “It’s scheduled to be disbursed this Wednesday.”

Switching to another scenario: You ask the bot for options on investments and the bot responds, “Based on your profile and spending patterns, the gold saver plan is the ideal investment option. I’m assuming you are looking at medium-term options?”

In a more urgent scenario: You notice a transaction was made with your credit card that you did not authorize. You initiate the conversation with the bot: “I did not make the last transaction on my card.” The bot replies, “OK Tim, please do confirm your identity by naming your dog and your first school.”

You: “Buster, St. Marks.”

Bot: “Thank you for confirming your ID. I have marked the last transaction as fraudulent and will update you on our findings. If you still have your card with you, I recommend that you choose the OTP option for all future transactions on your card.”

These interactions between you and your bank bot are extremely personalized and relevant to your needs. More importantly, these show how banking can be made easy and on the go. This is digital banking at its best.

Challenges

Everyone has been talking about the next big IT revolution driven by artificial intelligence (AI)—mainly natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML). Doomsday predictions of mass layoffs and machines taking over jobs are prevalent. However, these predictions are quite misplaced. The technology is here to enable us to do things better, increase efficiency, productivity, and build on the quality of core services overall.

Banking is an area that touches everyone’s lives but it is mostly viewed as a critical and necessary yet intimidating and difficult task. The key reason for this is a lack of understanding of the financial terms, the intricacies in the product or service offerings, and the related processes and norms that need to be followed to make the most of your investment or savings.

Financial institutions, on the other hand, struggle with servicing the multitude of queries and concerns from customers efficiently enough. The pressure of managing new accounts and selling new products and services take precedent over building strong relationships and customer service in the true sense.

IT investments in big data systems have resulted in huge amounts of historical and real-time data that have not been fully utilized to build for scale and efficiency.

Opportunities

Why will it work?

Conclusion