New tech trends in finance: why do we need chat bots

Image: Thomson Reuters

Chat bots are a hot topic and many companies are trying to use new communication technologies in their business. Finance was not an exception - new bots constantly appear here. Today, we will examine in more detail the existing solutions and talk about the prospects of such systems for managing bank accounts and trading on the stock exchange.
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How it works: examples of bank chat bots

Capital One bank holding, in the wake of other applications in the field of artificial intelligence, recently launched the Eno Eno chat bot , which allows customers to correspond with the bank, pay bills and receive account information using natural language.



The financial institution also launched Alexa Skill's virtual assistant for Amazon Echo and plans to be the first to launch a similar product for Microsoft's Cortana.

Mastercard develops chat bots for banks and companies together with Kasisto to combat fraud, increase operational efficiency and more efficient interaction with customers, partners, issuers and sellers.



The American bank Wells Fargo also announced the development of its own smart bot for Facebook Messenger. The virtual assistant will process the messages of users and give in response information about the balance of funds in their accounts, suggest the location of the nearest ATM, etc.

Financial media company Thomson Reuters claims that it is working on introducing chat bots functionality into its Eikon communication platform.

Not only banks: bots for stock traders

The most common function of chat bots in the field of stock trading is currently informational. Bots are used to quickly obtain financial information. For example, the Letstock bot transmits to Facebook Messenger information about the current stock price (“how much Apple costs today”) and financial news.



The Stock Stock bot for Telegram allows you to receive stock market quotes, futures, mutual funds, monitor the situation with prices of oil, gas and precious metals, as well as create special lists for tracking from several stocks and receive alerts on price movements.

Also known attempts to implement chat bots to obtain information on stock prices on the stock exchange - for example, using the IBM Watson platform.



The scheme of this bot

At the same time, there are separate attempts to create bots, with the help of which financial transactions are possible. For example, the British financial company AJ Bell has developed its own bot to purchase shares through the Facebook messenger. It works like this: first, the user needs to connect his brokerage account - for this, the bot sends a temporary password, after which you can choose a stock and buy or sell it:



In addition to receiving stock prices and placing orders to buy and sell, bots can solve other problems. For example, Polly Portfolio specializes in improving financial literacy and helping novice investors. The organization launched the PollyChat bot for Facebook Messenger - it asks the user questions about their attitude to current news and creates a financial profile based on the answers, which combines recommendations for financial transactions and selection of tools for trading.

Conclusion: live communication in finance is too important

Despite the “trend” of the chatbots theme, practice shows that in the field of finance this tool still solves a limited number of tasks. Most often, bots help users find out new information, be it a bank balance or stock quotes.

Even the most intelligent bots lack the ability to understand human needs, especially those related to complex financial decision-making issues. Therefore, waiting for the financial chat bots to become the best friend of investors and traders is not worth it, according to experts interviewed by the New York Times.

Communication systems will continue to be popular, allowing you to discuss financial issues directly with people - such as, for example, the LISA system from ITinvest.