The ABCs of AI at FIs

When dealing with artificial intelligence, not all financial institutions are ready for full-on integration. While digital transformation has taken shape over the last two decades, the true power of AI is still years away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get started. Here’s our three-step process to understand the benefits of AI.

Artificial Intelligence

So, what do we mean by Artificial Intelligence, specifically when it comes to banking? Well, we mean having the tools and technology necessary to understand and deliver insights and recommendations on your behalf to your customers through automation. It means enabling your front-line staff to be armed with highly personalized knowledge of their clients, their needs and having the best offer for them right now.

When a customer walks through the door, your associates should know their needs, their family’s needs and AI can help understand your customer’s aspirations and the best product to help them achieve it. Eventually, you may be able to develop new products or customize existing products to be designed specifically for each customer.

Business Intelligence

Not only does AI provide more information about your customers, but it also provides amazing internal information about your FI’s products and services. Better yet, it can also provide crucial insight into your competitors. Banks have troves of data. That business intelligence gives you the ability to segment and understand your propensity models where you can take an even more detailed look at your FI and, most importantly, your individual customers or small business customers. Are you offering the right products? Are your customers “cheating” on you? Do you need to refocus on loans instead of deposits?

Artificial intelligence can also give you predictive insights your FI can use to prepare for the future. For example, when the pandemic hit, how many banks rushed to create a PPP loan onboarding process? Could AI help predict the need or, better yet, design the product and create a faster onboarding tool? With the right AI engine, combined with a robust chatbot and onboarding experience, those tools could have been easily accessible.

Customer Insights

20 years ago, I worked at a bank, and we spent weeks going over every check we had processed to find what customers were paying mortgages and to where to boost our own mortgage marketing efforts. Now that information is seconds away with the right AI tools.

And this is where the true power of AI lies; it’s the ability to fully and holistically understand your customer and improve their financial lives. While, of course, we want to help them save and earn more money, but we also want to reduce the strain of maintaining too many financial relationships. The average consumer has about 30 financial apps on their mobile devices from banks to national coffee chains. By offering the top-tier of products and services and showing the benefit of our financial institutions, we can build relationships and gain the trust of the members of our communities. As a customer’s deposit balance grows, their financial wellbeing grows, which improves your bank’s efficiency. It’s a cycle that creates huge returns for your financial institution.

What to look for when evaluating an AI partner

First, don’t feel like you must go all-in on AI from the start. A reliable AI partner will help set you up for success without over pressuring you.

Make sure that your AI partner is working with you to make sure your data is accurate. Data hallucinations can cause headaches, but if your partner properly cleanses and normalizes your information, hallucinations can be minimized or eliminated.

Ensure your AI company is not only using data correctly (PII, SOC2, etc.), but is generating compliance-friendly language to your clients through either a chatbot or customer insights.

An AI partner should also help you understand the long-term goals of its product. You don’t need to understand everything about how it works, but you should be able to connect the dots for what it is delivering.

Bonus: Data Integration

Why make all the effort to get into AI? Because once you complete your journey, you will be able to achieve full Data Integration and see the full picture of your financial institution. By combining AI, Business Intelligence and Customer Insights, you can truly revolutionize your institution for both your stakeholders and for your customers.

I’d love to show you exactly how BOND.AI can lead you to an AI-first future.