In spite of having massive volumes of data relating to your movements, spending habits, and even holiday choices, banking institutions still provide little assistance in helping you manage your money wisely. Nevertheless, the situation is expected to change soon when Vernon Hill’s Metro Bank located in Britain unveils possibly the first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence that analyzes individuals’ spending patterns.
According to Metro Bank, its AI would get rid of various financial woes like forgetting to cancel an auto-renewing subscription or overspending by identifying them before they occur. Israeli-based Personetics is behind the powering of the groundbreaking technology, which will be launched this coming summer.
Well-informed Spending
Craig Donaldson, the chief executive officer of Metro Bank, echoed how humans are prone to financial issues including being mistakenly double charged for the same cup of coffee, accidentally subscribing for a new month or failing to cancel a free trial. However, Metro Bank’s application will feature a new Insights tab that would categorize spending before starting to identify irregularities and trends in your finances.
Although the insights are expected to only appear within the bank’s application, Alex Parks, the banks’ head of digital, told Forbes that the long-term mission is to relay such notifications to customers directly. For instance, when a certain utility bill such as electricity or gas increases, the bank flags it in a bid to keep customers informed.
MORE – RPA – 10 Powerful Examples in Enterprise
MORE – 10 Applications of Machine Learning in Finance
MORE – Top 25 AI Software for the Banking Industry
Slow and Steady
For a long time, rival mobile-only banks have promised to deliver a similar kind of AI-driven spending analysis, but are yet to live up to their promise. In fact, Monzo promised to offer artificial intelligence capability as a feature in 2015 during its launch. Even so, none of these mobile-only challenger banking entities have provided the type of automated spending analysis technology that Metro Bank is looking forward to delivering.
The most remarkable thing about Metro Bank is that it was previously viewed to have missed the smartphone revolution. In fact, it opened Britain’s first new high street banking institution in 2010. Since then, Metro Bank has been trying to catch up with other similar entities, particularly in the mobile banking space.
For the last 18 months, Metro Bank has scooped several accolades for its mobile application and even went ahead to surpass the features included in the apps of mobile rivals. This impressive feat is owed to the bank’s devoted efforts in redesigning its mobile experience from scratch to get to where it is currently.
Despite the bank’s accomplishments in recent times, CEO Alex Parks admitted that its artificial intelligence technology is still work-in-progress. He also added that there is no specific way for Metro Bank to categorize your spending. All the bank can do currently is guess, for instance, whether your Tesco trip was for either gas or groceries. To wrap up his statement, he said that the feature would be opt-in during its launch.
Parks declined to give a specific launch date. On the other hand, a spokesperson from Monzo said to Forbes that the company’s AI-driven spending analysis remains part of its blueprint.
Source Forbes
