AI today is advancing at a rapid pace and one of the biggest industries that is interested in investing in this new type of technology is that of finance. Many banks and lending institutions are interested in ramping up their AI development so that they could one day have an AI that could handle a variety of functions at their financial institution.
Some of the early signs of AI intervention in the financial industry have already begun. There are personal assistants, chatbots and a variety of customer service items that can be found on most types of financial services websites. These programs can help a financial institution to ease the burden on its customer service department but they don’t necessarily count as a full-blown AI system. Many experts in the industry are considering some of these early additions to machine learning as a weak AI.
Weak AI is a term that generally refers to a machine that’s capable of performing very specific tasks on a set function. These machines can continue to perform this set function without the use of a human operator. For financial institutions, there are currently chatbots and customer service items that are responsible for speech recognition, language translation, decision-making and even visual perception tasks such as verifying cash or checks. These types of solutions were something that generally required some form of human intervention but today they can be handled by machines.
Each area of the financial sector is using this type of technology differently. For example, there are insurance lenders and even mortgage lenders today that are using chatbots and online forms with some AI technology in order to streamline the process of applying for mortgage or even filing a claim. Many banks will use chat bots to answer questions and handle inquiries without having to tie up a human within the business. Wealth management and asset advisors are still some of the slowest in the financial services industry to take up this technology. One of the best AI adoptions for wealth management and asset services include chat bot style Robo advisors that can provide advice based off of current market conditions as not to tie up other operators.
A third of financial services in the United States in 2016 suggested that they were being held back mostly by operations, regulations and their budget for developing these new resources. As regulations related to AI and finance continue to open up, it could be only a matter of time before most of your financial services are handled through an AI program rather than a teller or a physical human on the end of a customer service line.
A nice advantage of using AI in the future of financial services is that investors could see a potential advantage. As large data management, processing speeds and cloud computing are improving, AI and predictive strategies for finance will also improve. AI could eventually be developed that is far more powerful than any other stock market speculation or financial advisor. Through the use of a firm AI that can spot discrepancies in financial distractions as well as sifts through thousands of reports in an instant, financial services that are able to offer AI analysis could become some of the most profitable and desired.
