Martin Häring, Chief Marketing Officer, Finastra, says banks that harness the power of AI and Big Data will be able to transform for future growth and better serve their customers.
As the Fourth Industrial Revolution continues to transform businesses and the way they operate, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly being viewed as fundamental in improving customer experience. And banks are no exception to this rule.
Today, marketing teams in fintech companies and banks are putting strong emphasis on using AI to finetune the manner in which they reach, engage with and retain their customers.
According to research by Gartner, AI bots are predicted to power 85 % of all customer service interactions by 2020. This underlines the fact that AI can be an extremely powerful technological tool if combined with the data-driven insights that banks currently possess.
It can allow financial institutions to truly get to grips with how to best appeal to their customers’ needs while further understanding their behaviours, preferences and limitations.
Customers show greater loyalty to banks that know who they are and tailor experiences to them. To deliver against this goal, it’s essential for banks to be conversant with the use of Big Data, AI and Machine Learning.
Celent research showed that 55% of banks are either using, actively considering or seeking new ways to innovate. During our flagship regional thought leadership conference, Finastra Universe, last year, 40 % of the audience said that AI would help them do their job better. In addition, almost a quarter believed AI will take care of their least interesting tasks, which positions AI in a support role rather than a threat to jobs.
Just as we are witnessing an increase in the use of digital assistants such as Alexa, Siri or Cortana to check the weather, book a taxi or reserve cinema tickets, the next step for banks is to launch consistent voice activated services.
Such technologies do not necessarily have to be limited to the retail side of financial services – they can further add value to customers across other business lines including corporate banking, treasury and capital markets.
At Finastra, we proactively support this kind of innovation across all areas of banking. Through our Platform-as-a-Service offering, FusionFabric.cloud, we are actively opening up our software to encourage new developments and innovations from Fintechs and start-ups.
Of course, and as with every new technology, financial institutions must first evaluate the potential risks and associated benefits they may face before turning to AI. By deploying a low-risk and low-cost solution as a first step, banks should gather usage data to help them make informed, data-driven decisions as they continue to explore more advanced voice capabilities for their customers.
The ultimate aim of AI in this sector is to profoundly stimulate increased competition, leading customers to assess different bank offers and shift should they come across a service that better suits their needs elsewhere.
In our industry, delivering great customer experience is fundamental in allowing banks to generate stronger relationships with their customers that will, in turn, create deeper loyalty and provide better experiences.
Being able to personalise and improve customer experience over time by harnessing the power of AI and Big Data will significantly contribute to any bank’s success in the near future. It will allow them to turn this Big Data into recommendations which can then be transformed into vital action, better serving their customers.
As we all know, in today’s heavily digitised world, exceptional customer experience is the decisive factor in a business’s growth tomorrow. Embracing that change as a powerful force for businesses will prove fundamental in this growth.
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