The deep dive: Chatbots in FinTech and banking

By Puja Sharma

‘The deep dive’ is our bi-weekly exploration of a relevant topic, hot trend or new product. For Prime subscribers only.

The evolution of the FinTech and banking sector has created an enormous need to provide better customer service, paving a way for chatbots. Chatbots are essentially AI-driven programs designed to stimulate conversation and aid, human users,  over any platform. They are designed to interpret user requests and provide a prompt solution.

With the advancement of technology and the growth of the customer base in FinTech, AI-driven programs are developed on deep learning to cater to a mass number of customers without reducing the quality of service. From mobile banking and clearing invoices to money transfer, net banking, paying bills and tax returns, there are plenty of use cases for the help of chatbots.

How does it work

In the FinTech or banking world, chatbots are designed to satiate customers’ experience on such designated platform. Additionally, they also help staff in preventing a stressful situation that could arise while directly dealing with the clients.

Machine learning and AI can offer many such options to customers today. The automatization of repetitive tasks is the most common use for chatbots in bank customer services, tasks such as these require self-learning to provide a fast and simple solution but do  not imply creativity. Chatbots main  activities could include simple tasks such as:

• Greeting customers
• Provide information/solution to the customer
• Obtaining information regarding the users’ experience
• Payment acceptance from the client

Who is under the radar?

Chatbots use only a fraction of the whole range of AI. Banking assistant software, instead of using rarely or excessive functions linked with AI such as location tracking, facial recognition, navigation, prefers chatbots.

As per the Indian government website, five chatbots have been deployed in FinTech in India:

• RIL’s chatbot for shareholders: Reliance Industries, in June 2020 launched India’s first Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled chatbot on WhatsApp, partner Facebook’s platform, to provide answers to shareholders regarding RIL’s Rs 53,125-crore rights issue.
• Ask VAHEI:As part of the Digital India program and for ease of doing business, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has launched an AI-powered chatbot to cater to the queries of its users.
• Pai: National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) had launched an AI-based virtual assistant – Pai ­– to improve digital financial inclusion in India.
• ICICI Bank: To tackle the high influx of customer queries, ICICI Bank has introduced an AI engine to process queries from customers using text analysis and semantic analysis.

Why does it matter now?

Chatbots have become a perennial and intelligent solution for both the banking and fintech industry. It is a time-conversing alternative to the tedious, long manual queues at the banks, allowing clients the flexibility to get the work done from any corner of the world with a sense of security. Moreover, the Covid-19 outbreak leading to lockdown in the country has also accelerated the use of chatbots in the last few years.

According to a Business Insider report worldwide, 67% of customers are using chatbots for customer support. In FinTech, customer service is considered the primary essential function to run the organisation. Chatbots, therefore, help companies garner high customer service expectations and automate their profit while saving customer service costs by hiring more individuals.

For Financial technology or FinTech companies, it is humanly not possible to handle multiple complex databases as well as store the confidential data of their clients daily. Chatbots have seamlessly reduced manual labour and the cost of hiring. The company without the time constraints  and human labour can access any data on the system.