In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has evolved from an emerging technology to a widespread tool for improving business efficiency. AI is now being used in numerous industries to handle administrative tasks, assist customers with problems and make predictions and recommendations based on past data.
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In the finance industry, banks and other organizations can and should take advantage of artificial intelligence to make their customers’ lives easier. We asked a panel of Forbes Finance Council members how financial institutions can best implement AI to improve customer engagement and retention. Here’s what they had to say.
Members share their thoughts on how AI is changing finance for customers.ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF FORBES COUNCILS MEMBERS.
1. Personalize Customers’ Banking Experiences
Instead of carpet bombing deposit promotions, banks can use AI to personalize offers based on customer behaviors and needs. For example, AI can observe money transfer activities to a competing bank and offer a matching interest rate to deepen the relationship. If a key customer calls because they have accidentally overdrawn a checking account, the AI can decide to waive the fee automatically. – Wei Ke, Simon-Kucher & Partners
2. Handle Process-Oriented Work
Financial institutions can improve their customer relationships by having professionals whose sole focus is on client relationships, letting process designers leverage AI to take over much of the process-based work financial professionals have been focusing on for years, taking time and attention away from their clients. – Levi Morehouse, Ceterus
3. Answer FAQs
AI could be the best thing when handling high volume FAQs. Institutions can save time and money by having AI take care of simple questions over a messenger application. Once a customer has the answer, any more complicated questions can be handed off to a human employee. This process cuts down on repetitive calls and helps customer service reps to be more productive. – Greg Herlean, Horizon Trust
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4. Make Financial Health Recommendations
Today, many banks offering personal financial management simply show customers their categorized spending, which just makes them feel bad about poor habits. Banks need to take the logical next step and answer the question: What can customers do to live healthier financial lives? If a bank is going to leverage AI, it should be to recommend action based on a customer’s unique behavior. – Corey Gross, Sensibill
5. Support Lending With Predictive Analytics
Banking is a data-heavy industry, particularly with loan facilitation. Even though decisions are driven by data, banks that implement a lengthy, paper-based application process miss out. Predictive analytics can help streamline the constant customer data mining and analytics processes that go with lending, leading to faster loan completion and opening up more time for customer interactions. – Trevor Dryer, Mirador Financial
6. Automate Administrative Tasks
One way financial institutions can utilize AI to improve customer engagement and retention is through automation. By utilizing AI to automate many of the administrative tasks employees do, those employees can then focus more of their time and effort on building relationships with customers and helping customers with creative solutions to problems. – Josh Fein, AdvicePeriod
7. Increase Transparency
Robo-advisory, risk assessment, market predictions and many other areas in finance have already seen vast improvement due to AI implementations. One area that is relevant to private financial transactions is the sifting of dense legal and financial documents. Systems equipped with AI can scour exponentially more data than a human can and provide more detail and transparency for clients. – Atish Davda, EquityZen
8. Forecast Customer Habits
Notifying the banking customer, in real-time, if their spending trend is leading them to unsustainable spending levels or to favorable savings levels given their typical income and expense would be highly beneficial and foster loyalty. Relying on these notifications without needing to input your budget could be a very attractive benefit for budgeters and non-budgeters and foster significant loyalty. – Scott Karstens, NFG Brokerage
