UK online wealth management firm, Moneyfarm, has acquired the technology that drives the Ernest fintech chatbot, marking a move towards AI capabilities.
While details including price have not yet been revealed, Lorenzo Sicilia, the Ernest CTO is set to be involved in the process of bringing the AI platform on board.
Ernest is equipped with natural language processing for answering financial questions, a contributing factor in creating competitive customer experiences, an area constantly growing in importance.
According to TechCrunch, Moneyfarm CEO and co-founder, Giovanni Daprà, said: “Artificial intelligence and a conversational user interface will help us to improve our algorithms and ultimately offer a better solution to our customers… As we work to integrate the Ernest technology across our product offering we’ll be able to assist over an individual’s full wealth lifecycle, from the first pay cheque through to retirement”.
A central factor driving the importance of customer experiences within financial services is the impending PSD2 directive. This directive will dismantle the dominant control traditional banks have over customer data, opening it up to third-parties leveraging cutting edge technologies and innovations.
“Moneyfarm’s acquihire of the Ernest technology provides a fantastic opportunity to take the vision for Ernest to a new level, and create a more advanced artificial intelligence based adviser for consumers,” Daprà said.
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Ernest is capable of notifying users of factors that can direct better money management, this aspect of the technology in particular would be highly applicable to working with the massive amounts of customer data made available from established banks following PSD2.
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Juniper Research revealed findings earlier this year showing that organisations could potentially make £6 billion savings through the implementation of chatbots, while also extracting the fallible human element that can be costly to reputation, for example.
