In this day and age, financial institutions are turning towards chatbots as a modern way to assist customers in completing financial transactions. Chatbots are computer programs that carry out conversations via artificial intelligence and allow customers to have their financial inquiries answered without the need for live customer service representatives. With the ability to handle complex functions such as taking payments, providing financial advice and scheduling appointments, chatbots offer financial institutions an efficient and cost effective method of assisting their customers on various financial matters.
The prospect of chatbots being increasingly integrated within the workflows that have long been the preserve of white-collar employees raises some interesting questions around alignment of financial products and the demonstrated appropriateness to a consumer. As more account management and customer care servicing is reassigned to interactive software, the opportunity to employ impassive review is expanding.
The 2008 financial collapse began with salespeople misselling sub-prime mortgages, whilst receiving commission payments. Now we have car salespeople promoting and selling financial products, whilst receiving commission.
Chatbots don’t receive commission. Chatbots can consistently adhere to regulations, policies and practices. Chatbots can provide full transparency.
Mercator Advisory Group anticipates the expanding use of chatbots to deliver high-touch customer engagement from Financial Institutions will also prove to be a valuable tool for Financial Institutions to educate their clients and thereby create more knowledgeable consumers better aware of the longer term implications of various financial strategies and the products that make them possible. While removing the human element entirely from a needs analysis may be less intriguing to some purveyors, having compliance and ethics shift to the rules based review process enabled by advances in regtech would be a benefit for large and small FIs alike.
Overview by Joseph Walent, Associate Director, Customer Interactions Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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