Banking chatbot competes with your friendly bank manager

The banking chatbot has come a long way from just linking to FAQs and referring you to a human colleague when questions get too profound. Now there is a chatbot, a virtual agent in conversational AI for banks, which its creator IPsoft claims is the first conversational banking solution. Chetan Dube, chief executive officer at IPsoft said: "With 1Bank we provide the most humanlike digital experience in the marketplace, built from the knowledge we've gained serving six of the world's leading banks with conversational AI. "We are giving banks the possibility of providing customers with their own personal banker around the clock." The virtual agent is trained with banking specific language and can communicate by web, mobile or voice, claims its parent company, a leader in enterprise AI and cognitive and autonomic solutions. The agent, called 1Bank, can open and close accounts and can recommend and even set up recurring payments from different accounts. It also advises on unpaid bills by letting customers know about incoming bills and insufficient funds in their account. The capabilities continue with the usual sorts of routine tasks you would have once needed a person to help with: finding transactions, disputing fraudulent charges, getting a new PIN and applying for a credit card. The chatbot even takes the initiative, leading customers in the next steps with travel plans, creating travel alerts after an airline purchase and recommending currency exchange and withdrawal. According to IPSoft: "Consumer relationships in the retail banking space have never been particularly strong.