How Chatbots can Transform Financial Institutions.

The purpose of this article is to describe how chatbots can be utilized in financial institutions. It describes the basic use cases for chatbots and how they can be utilized to alter management procedures.

Chatbots have shown lots of advantages to financial institutions like banks that have so far implemented chatbots in providing services to customers. According to Jupiter Research, Nearly 90% of bank interactions (internal and external) are automated through AI chatbots. Whereas 43% of customers deal with their banking problems by using a chatbot rather than going to their branch.

They are many ways through which chatbots have changed financial institutions use, in this article we are going to look at the use cases of chatbots on financial institutions. These use cases are categorized into three categories.

A: Awareness Category - This category includes capabilities that provide financial awareness to the customer, such as providing account balances, enabling simple transactions like payments, providing alerts, etc. These are interactions that customers can already accomplish today using their digital device

B: Optimize Category - This category goes beyond financial awareness to financial coaching and includes capabilities like setting up a budget, optimizing expenditures, etc.

C: Intelligence Category -  This category goes beyond optimization to now help customers achieve their life goals. Examples include planning and executing a home purchase, a car, planning for a wedding, and planning for college.

Use cases using chatbots in financial institutions considering the awareness category.

1. Checking account balance.

Normally people check on the account balances by using the USSD Codes or through mobile apps of the specific service providers. Checking balances using these ways have been seen to be very confusing and also time-consuming. But, among the use cases of chatbots here is to check the account balances or get the bank statement.

When a financial institution has chatbots, the user of that chatbot can simply ask "What is the balance of my account?" and the chatbot will immediately answer the customer with the exact balance amount that is available.

2. Verifying bill payment due dates.

Chatbots play the role of reminding us of the due dates of various bill payments. When chatting with a chatbot you can be given the due date of a particular bill. In addition to that chatbots have the ability to give alerts on the bill's due date just the same as how other applications give notifications. This means it has the ability to keep track of the bills that were created within it and know when to remind the customer. For example, if you set a bill on 20th Nov and its due date is on 28th Nov, a chatbot will play a role of reminding you of that bill a week 3 days before it is due

3. Setting up payments

Chatbots support a lot of payments, which means using a chatbot a customer of a financial institution can view services or products and choose the products that he/she wants to pay for instantly within that chatbot.

4. Setting up recurring payments

If there is a recurring payment that a customer selected, a chatbot has the ability to play the role of reminding the customer that there is a bill payment to be done within a specific period of time.

5. Sending money

With a chatbot, money can be easily sent within the channel that a chatbot has been implemented, this means if a financial institution has opted to have a chatbot within WhatsApp, then its customers will be able to send money to anyone within the WhatsApp channel. Customers have no need to use other means rather than the chatbots provided by the given financial institution.

6. Withdrawing money

This happens the same as happens when a customer wants to send money. A financial institution like a bank can have a chatbot that supports the withdrawal capabilities of money. This simply means, if the chatbot is implemented with WhatsApp then a customer can ask a chatbot to withdraw money just within WhatsApp.

Use cases using chatbots in financial institutions considering the optimized category.

1. Helping in setting up a budget - Get to know that financial institutions like insurance companies and banks can have chatbots that will help simplify the process of budgeting for their customers. More than 60% of the Insurance companies' budgets have been proven to be most confusing, thus with a help of chatbots customers can now select and choose the appropriate budget according to the way they want.

1. Helping in setting up saving goals - A financial institution may enable its customers to choose their prescribed savings goals. This feature comes with chatbots because most banks and other institutions have savings feature that most customers have found difficult to set thus chatbots make setting up savings goals more easily.
2. Recommend the best investment product - The chatbot is very intelligent to recommend the appropriate and the best product for a customer to invest in or to buy. A customer can ask for a list of available services and the chatbot will probably provide a list with detailed descriptions of each product eventually, the chatbot can recommend the appropriate product to the customer. Chatbots recommend the products in accordance with the data that the customer has provided.
3. Recommend where to cut spending to stay within budget - With a chatbot, customers can be recommended where to cut spending so they can stay within budget. As chatbots as powered by AI technology, they can know and understand the spending on items by priority and recommend the exact items and amount to use without exceeding the budget.

The use cases considering the intelligent category simply involve helping customers achieve their life goals. Examples include planning and executing a home purchase, a car, planning for a wedding, planning for college, etc.

Wrapping it up

Financial institutions are connected to people through a number of digital channels – mobile devices, desktop computers, personal computers, and so on. A digital channel is a channel through which the data connection happens between the customer and the financial institution. The growing use of chatbots within financial institutions makes it possible for these institutions to have a digital presence even on very basic platforms.

Talking about the advantages of using chatbots, they provide a great deal of opportunity and a lot of benefits to the customers of financial institutions. From the moment a customer interacts with a chatbot, the customer gets to know the financial institution's policies and procedures as well as when they can get help or get a refund if their issue isn't solved. Chatbots give an opportunity to the customer to save money and increase the chances of saving it.

Now, you can have a chatbot for your financial institution from us Neurotech Africa, and lead the competition.

Contact us: info@neurotech.africa , +255 757 294 146