Top 8 Finance Chatbot Use Cases & Applications in 2024

Financial services is one of the top 5 industries benefiting from chatbots and conversational AI. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2/3 of global financial service providers have been implementing chatbots in their apps to facilitate customer services and comply  with social distancing regulations (conversational banking).

Continuous developments in machine learning, natural language processing (NLP) and intent recognition provide chatbots with interactive features that enable them to enhance customer service in the financial industry, mitigate fraud, act as financial planners, and help employees with internal operations.

Here we explore the benefits and use cases of chatbots in the finance industry to guide finance executives regarding their benefits.

Chatbot use cases in finance

Chatbots offer a wide range of benefits. They are available 24/7 to provide customer service, can  interact in multiple languages, and provide consistent answers that comply with financial regulation and help curb the spread of misinformation . Chatbots are also connected to the firm’s financial database to quickly fetch data to aid both employees and clients. These features make chatbots great candidates to be used in finance for.

1. Onboarding clients

New clients can rely on chatbots for onboarding procedures such as:

• Ensuring the uploading and availability of all required financial documents.
• Sending their contract for review and reminding them to sign it.
• Setting up and exploring a new account.
• Downloading and exploring a financial app on users’ phones.

Chatbots will also collect new customers’ reviews about their customer  journey and provide services throughout the onboarding conversations for detailed analysis.

2. Improving customer service

Thanks to extensive customer service offered by companies like Apple, customers expect more from all the services that they use. Insurance and banking customers also tend to require instant support and correct responses to their inquiries. Chatbots:

• Are available 24/7.
• Answer FAQs.
• Provide consistent answers.
• Enable a secure channel to access and modify personal information without human interference. For example, users can chat with a chatbot to complete transactions.
• Receive services in a personalized manner taking into account your location and history with the financial services provider.

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Salesforce is the CRM market leader and Salesforce Contact Genie enables multi-channel live chat supported by AI-driven assistants. Salesforce Contact Center enables workflow automation for many branches of the CRM and especially for the customer service operations by leveraging chatbot and conversational AI technologies.

Check our article on the use of conversational AI for customer service to learn more about such use cases.

3. Transactions

Chatbots can help customers perform financial transactions and transfers between accounts. A chatbot can ask the user questions such as “to whom you would like to send money?”. After getting a name, a chatbot can look up the receiver’s account or their IBAN number to complete the transaction. This is especially helpful for clients with vision or movement disabilities.

Other transaction examples include:

• Report a missing credit card or unauthorized transaction.
• Change account passwords or security questions.
• Modify account holds or financial limits.
• Apply for a private loan.

4. Providing financial advice

Chatbots can act as personal finance management assistants or financial coaches. They can advise and answer users’ questions about:

• Monthly and quarterly spending.
• Recommended saving plans.
• Bank balance.
• Insurance and tax tips.

Users can also ask chatbots to send them a message to alert them when a budget limit is reached or when a promotion is available.

5. Cross-selling

Financial firms may offer different services and products such as insurance, loans, mortgages, investment advisors, wealth management, etc. 

For example, during client onboarding, by asking questions such as “where was your previous work or home location?,” a chatbot can recognize if a client recently moved and offer them renters insurance suited to their needs.

6. Preventing fraud

Chatbots record conversations with users and can leverage natural language understanding (NLU) to detect fraudulent behavior or suspicious activities to alert live agents to take action.

Additionally, data extracted from chatbots can be used to identify fraudulent patterns and train the chatbot on updates data.

7. Onboarding employees

Chatbots can be used to aid new hires by:

• Answering their questions about the firm’s policies and regulations
• Providing orientation material via charts, photos, or videos
• Creating or changing their business account passwords

Chatbots can also train new hires on conversations with customers and how to handle their financial inquiries.

You can read our 4 Reasons Businesses Should Automate Employee Onboarding article to learn about automated employee onboarding’s benefits.

8. Helping with internal operations

Chatbots can act as a virtual assistant for financial advisors or banking personnel. Employees can rely on chatbots to provide them with quick answers when facing customers such as:

• Policies or regulations.
• Details about the financial services provided by the firm.
• Forecasts about the financial status of a client.

Chatbots can also direct employees through internal processes such as sharing documents between team members, reporting to the employee’s supervisor, as well as documenting daily progress.

Future of conversational AI in finance

Here are some facts about chatbots in the finance industry:

• The global chatbot in banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) market was valued at ~$586M in 2019 and it is expected to reach ~$7B in 2030.
• Online banking users were estimated at 1.9 billion users in 2020, and they are expected to reach 2.5 billion by 2024.
• 90% of interactions in banks are predicted to be automated by 2022 using chatbots.
• 43% of US customers deal with their banking problems by speaking to a chatbot instead of going to a branch.
• Virtual finance assistants can help users reduce their spending by ±14%.

These statistics indicate that chatbots have had a significant impact on the finance industry and will continue to grow with developments in AI and machine learning. However, financial data is sensitive and critical, therefore it is important to ensure that AI-enabled chatbots are trained on credible, non-biased data in order to protect customer privacy, eliminate breaches and fraud, and avoid chatbot failure.

To read more about the future of conversational AI and chatbots, feel free to read our Top 5 Expectations Concerning the Future of Conversational AI article.

For more on conversational AI

For more chatbot applications in the finance industry, read our articles about:

• Banking chatbots.
• Insurance chatbots.
• Conversational commerce.

If you feel like your business will benefit from a conversational AI solution, don’t forget to check out our data-driven lists of chatbot vendors and voice bot platforms.

And we can guide you through the process:

This article was drafted by former AIMultiple industry analyst Alamira Jouman Hajjar.