#PayPal certainly isn’t stalling its innovations for customers. The company is continuing to expand its roster of new features with the launch of instant bank transfers for Visa and Mastercard users, announced today. The service will go live for all users next month, and will cost $ 0.25 per transaction–cheaper than competitor services, like Square. It […]
Bank Innovation
In my first blog of this series on our latest UK banking consumer survey—Beyond Digital—I explained why there’s still plenty of life in the bank branch, since even younger #customers still value human interaction. In this second post, I look at our findings on a much newer and more virtual channel to market: #robo-advice—the new generation of automated financial advice services powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
#Banks across the world are continuing to invest heavily in robo-advisery services, seeing them as a way to deliver personally tailored financial information and guidance at high scale and relatively low marginal cost. The headline findings from our study suggest that this investment is justified, with fully two-thirds of all UK customers and 74 percent of millennials saying they’d be willing to receive entirely computer-generated advice on relatively simple decisions such as which type of bank account to #open (see Figure 1).
Interestingly, an even higher proportion of consumers—74 percent overall, rising to 79 percent of millennials—say they’re willing to receive robo-advice on more complex issues such as what investments they should make. And as Figure 2 shows, when asked why they’d be happy to accept advice from a machine instead of a human, they point mainly to benefits around speed and convenience, cost, and impartiality.
A deeper analysis reveals further significant insights. For example, while 25 percent of all consumers say robo-advisers’ greater impartiality gives them an advantage over their human counterparts, the proportion believing this rises to almost one-third among OAPs—suggesting older consumers are more sceptical about the objectivity of human advisers. And our findings that only 19 percent of consumers think computers are less likely to make mistakes, and that just 13 percent believe their data would be more secure than with a human, suggest the overwhelming majority have limited trust in robo-advisers’ decision making and security.
Our study also indicates that there are some areas of financial advice where consumers feel human interactions have yet to be fully translated into the available technologies. As Figure 3 shows, almost two-thirds think it’s important to have human advisers on hand to provide advice on large, long-term products such as mortgages. In contrast, fewer than half feel they need human guidance on using their bank’s online and mobile services.
And in terms of what they value about speaking to a human representative, consumers rate the ability to ask direct questions and seek personalised advice as the top advantage, followed by being able to get what they need faster, and then humans’ better ability to explain complex issues. Interestingly, having a representative who knows the consumer well ranks very low as a benefit.
So, what does all this means for banks’ robo-advice strategies and investments? Combine these findings with those I presented in my first blog—including the fact that millennials are the heaviest users of branches, tapering down to OAPs as the lightest—and I believe a clear message emerges: Winning and retaining customers in the future will depend critically on striking the right balance between human-delivered and AI-driven services.
Put simply, banks need to recognise that for many consumers—including younger ones—the shift towards computer-generated services cannot succeed if it’s at the expense of access to human service at their local bank branch. And automation must be used to not only make banks work smarter, but also to improve and personalise the customer experience.
It follows that the next challenge for many banks is to reassure customers that they can receive the same level of service from a robo-adviser, and pull together the various threads of information they hold on their customers to create a personalised yet secure service. Consumers’ readiness to accept robo-advice for some financial decisions means that banks developing these services are pushing at an open door. But this doesn’t mean they can afford to shut off their customers’ access to interactions with real humans.
The post Customers are open to robo-advice—with a few conditions appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
It’s been less than a year since Goldman Sachs unveiled its #marketplace #lending arm, Marcus. How has the platform been doing so far? Marcus has lent more than $ 1 billion since the launch, and plans to “cross” the $ 2 billion threshold by the end of the year, Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein said in an interview […]
Bank Innovation
#Klarna, Swedish #payments firm, is looking into the person to person payments #space, as the company secured a #banking #license earlier today, Bank Innovation has learned. Klarna has been granted a full banking license by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, according to a company announcement. The move instantly turned Klarna into one of “Europe’s largest […]
Bank Innovation
Allowing customers the ability to analyze their spending on mobile, within a specific range of dates, does not sound like the height of #fintech innovation—so why is #Citi the only major U.S. credit card issuer to do so? Citi Cards launched the #feature—which allows users to view a summary of their spending within a customizable […]
Bank Innovation
Think the #financial world has finally recovered from the 2008 #crisis? Think again. Most #investors still count themselves as “influenced” or “strongly influenced” by the events of the financial crisis, according to the Legg Mason 2017 Investment survey released recently. #Millennial investor habits were most strongly affected, the survey of more than 15,000 global investors […]
Bank Innovation
Rideshare, autonomous vehicles, tech companies getting into manufacturing — these trends, among others, have prompted traditional carmakers to review their own business processes. Bookmark
Bank Innovation
It’s not everyday that a #fintech applies for a #bank charter, so when #SoFi did just that it caught our eye. But will this be a big bank? The short answer is no, or not at least for a few years. Buried in SoFi&8217;s application are details on the proposed bank&8217;s staffing size. The bank […]
Bank Innovation
In my first blog of this series on our latest UK banking consumer survey—Beyond Digital—I explained why there’s still plenty of life in the bank branch, since even younger #customers still value human interaction. In this second post, I look at our findings on a much newer and more virtual channel to market: #robo-advice—the new generation of automated financial advice services powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
#Banks across the world are continuing to invest heavily in robo-advisery services, seeing them as a way to deliver personally tailored financial information and guidance at high scale and relatively low marginal cost. The headline findings from our study suggest that this investment is justified, with fully two-thirds of all UK customers and 74 percent of millennials saying they’d be willing to receive entirely computer-generated advice on relatively simple decisions such as which type of bank account to #open (see Figure 1).
Interestingly, an even higher proportion of consumers—74 percent overall, rising to 79 percent of millennials—say they’re willing to receive robo-advice on more complex issues such as what investments they should make. And as Figure 2 shows, when asked why they’d be happy to accept advice from a machine instead of a human, they point mainly to benefits around speed and convenience, cost, and impartiality.
A deeper analysis reveals further significant insights. For example, while 25 percent of all consumers say robo-advisers’ greater impartiality gives them an advantage over their human counterparts, the proportion believing this rises to almost one-third among OAPs—suggesting older consumers are more sceptical about the objectivity of human advisers. And our findings that only 19 percent of consumers think computers are less likely to make mistakes, and that just 13 percent believe their data would be more secure than with a human, suggest the overwhelming majority have limited trust in robo-advisers’ decision making and security.
Our study also indicates that there are some areas of financial advice where consumers feel human interactions have yet to be fully translated into the available technologies. As Figure 3 shows, almost two-thirds think it’s important to have human advisers on hand to provide advice on large, long-term products such as mortgages. In contrast, fewer than half feel they need human guidance on using their bank’s online and mobile services.
And in terms of what they value about speaking to a human representative, consumers rate the ability to ask direct questions and seek personalised advice as the top advantage, followed by being able to get what they need faster, and then humans’ better ability to explain complex issues. Interestingly, having a representative who knows the consumer well ranks very low as a benefit.
So, what does all this means for banks’ robo-advice strategies and investments? Combine these findings with those I presented in my first blog—including the fact that millennials are the heaviest users of branches, tapering down to OAPs as the lightest—and I believe a clear message emerges: Winning and retaining customers in the future will depend critically on striking the right balance between human-delivered and AI-driven services.
Put simply, banks need to recognise that for many consumers—including younger ones—the shift towards computer-generated services cannot succeed if it’s at the expense of access to human service at their local bank branch. And automation must be used to not only make banks work smarter, but also to improve and personalise the customer experience.
It follows that the next challenge for many banks is to reassure customers that they can receive the same level of service from a robo-adviser, and pull together the various threads of information they hold on their customers to create a personalised yet secure service. Consumers’ readiness to accept robo-advice for some financial decisions means that banks developing these services are pushing at an open door. But this doesn’t mean they can afford to shut off their customers’ access to interactions with real humans.
In my next blog, I’ll look at the changing role of banks’ contact centres. Watch this space.
The post Customers are open to robo-advice—with a few conditions appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
In this episode, host Brett King is joined by Stephen Wolfram to talk about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and how those will affect the #future of #money, finance, and the ethical discussions we need to be having to plan for it. Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language; the author of […]
Bank Innovation
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