Whys and Hows of Using an AI Approach for FinTech Chatbots

Finance and banking can gain a lot from modern technologies. But the biggest trend of recent years is surely artificial intelligence (AI), especially AI-driven chatbots. Let’s uncover the main advantages such solutions offer, major use cases for them, and development specifics you should be aware of.

Why build AI-powered chatbots for finance?

Unlike rule-based chatbots, AI-driven chatbots can:

• Imitate a human conversation
• Understand customers’ questions in natural language
• Learn during conversations
• Provide more relevant answers

AI algorithms allow smart chatbots for FinTech to better assist your customers by managing transactions, answering questions regarding accounts, and handling multiple requests simultaneously. Combined with features of rule-based chatbots like resetting passwords and checking balances, they can help organizations improve various business processes.

Let’s take a look at the benefits smart AI-powered chatbots bring to the table:

• Improved operational efficiency ー Finance AI chatbots can guide customers through different processes like document preparation, answering their questions at each step. Thus, they streamline business processes and free time for employees to handle more complex issues.
• 24/7 personalized customer service ー Non-stop support, including on weekends and holidays, can improve the customer experience and help banks save over 7 billion USD a year.
• Enriched data analysis ー AI chatbots for FinTech can analyze customers’ spending habits and detect unobvious patterns to provide highly personalized budgeting advice.
• Cost reduction ー Smart chatbots can help you save money by automating compliance tasks (like KYC verifications) so you don’t need to spend resources creating and maintaining separate solutions.
• Enhanced security ー When thoroughly developed and implemented, AI chatbots can detect unusual activity and immediately flag it, preventing potential fraud.

How can chatbots be applied in fintech?

If your business operates in finance and banking, here are some ideas for how you can use AI-powered chatbots:

• Onboarding ー Simplify the onboarding journey for customers: familiarize them with corporate policies, rules, and regulations, gather personal data, and verify identities.
• Digital transactions ー Help customers automate their subscription payments, investments, and monthly bills, or set reminders for such activities via a single tool.
• Personal account management ー Allow customers to easily and quickly review their transaction history, monitor market information, check their balances, etc.
• Investment advice ー Give customers relevant and personalized advice regarding investments, portfolio management, and market dynamics any time of the day, even on holidays.
• Document management automation ー Improve customer service by automatically generating various invoices, application forms, and other documentation upon a customer’s request.
• Personal finance management ー Show customers a convenient analysis of their spending and saving patterns and offer valuable tips for improving their financial health.
• Insurance and loans ー Assist customers in preparing all required documentation and guide them through the entire process of applying for a loan or making an insurance claim.
• Fraud detection ー Execute a thorough authentication process before letting a customer receive access to their data to detect suspicious activity.
• Upsell ー Proactively recommend personalized offers to customers based on their interests and historical purchase trends.

What should you consider when developing an AI finance chatbot?

1. Choose the development approach wisely

You can have your development team build a FinTech chatbot in one of two major ways:

1. From scratch using generative AI models
2. Using third-party libraries that contain necessary functionality

Your choice should depend on your project’s goals, your preferences, and relevant compliance requirements for your financial organization. Check out our detailed article on how to make an AI chatbot in Python for practical examples of both development approaches to see which is best for you.

2. Add contextual awareness

If you try working with a free chatbot, you might notice that it tends to lose the context of your conversation. It will likely:

• Not remember the conversation history
• Provide low-quality, generic answers
• Use old data in answers
• Hallucinate, leaving you with responses that make no sense

This happens because large language models (LLMs) that serve as the basis for such chatbots require an additional professional touch. Apriorit experts have dedicated an entire blog article to practical examples of how to make the most out of your chatbot by updating, customizing, and improving LLMs.

3. Protect against attacks

Establishing proper cybersecurity measures like data encryption and enhanced authentication is vital for delivering a competitive and reliable solution. Your customers expect excellent protection methods, as they entrust FinTech chatbots with their sensitive data including:

• Bank account numbers
• Personal information
• Investment data

For modern AI chatbots, you also want to prevent malicious attacks like prompt injections. We created a dedicated blog article explaining the risks of prompt injection attacks and offering ways to protect your LLMs from them.

Ask Apriroit for more

Aside from helping you design and implement a custom AI-powered chatbot, Apriorit can be of assistance with other software engineering and quality assurance tasks.

Our FinTech portfolio includes:

• SaaS accounting software
• Secure smart contracts
• Private blockchain networks
• DeFi applications
• NFTs
• Comprehensive security audits of financial solutions

Explore our full expertise in chatbot development on the Apriorit website.

Ready to discuss your next project? Contact us at info@apriorit.com.

Want to discover more about technology trends and AI use cases for finance and FinTech? Come meet Apriorit’s CEO and AI & Cybersecurity Delivery Managers at iFX EXPO International 2024.

Our very own Klaudia Zaika, Olha Kolomoiets, and Maryna Prudka will be visiting the iFX EXPO conference in Limassol, Cyprus, which takes place June 18–20. We’ll be happy to meet you and discuss how we can help you build FinTech products that rule the market.