Financial Services Customers Set to Embrace AI but Human Contact Still Vital

Customers in the UK are embracing the use of AI driven financial services (FS), with 63% happy to use chatbots for every day queries and over a third preferring an instant response from a chatbot over a delayed one from a human.

Research carried out by Pinsent Masons and Innovate Finance demonstrates the opportunity for AI to underpin fundamental FS functions, while not losing sight that the role of the human is crucial to transform the industry and garner greater consumer trust.

The report found that when engaging with an AI, the majority of FS customers are happy to do so for simple queries. The figures slightly dropped where services are deemed more complicated and require more consumer data, but remained significant. 33% of consumers are happy to use an AI for mortgage applications, nearly 40% for credit checks and 45% for insurance quotes.

You can’t just have AIs making decisions without explanation. Developers need to be extra careful in applying the right technology to the right problem.

Luke Scanlon, Head of FinTech Propositions at Pinsent Masons, commented:

“What we can see from the research is that consumers are open to the use of AI in financial services but, as with the adoption of a lot of technology, there are legal, ethical and cultural challenges to overcome. Early adopters are comfortable with using AI across a multitude of services and see the benefits of it in streamlining certain processes. 

The key concern cited by customers around using AI centres on the risk of their data being hacked and so, it is not surprising that customers are not as willing to use services that require more data from them, particularly where the benefits of the use of the technology and their data has not been clearly explained to them.”

Andreas Burner, CIO of SmartStream Technologies, told TFT:

“You can’t just have AIs making decisions without explanation. Developers need to be extra careful in applying the right technology to the right problem. There is a high demand of good developers and the market of competent and skilled people is very small.”