Rise of the Machines

Tech news these days is dominated by stories on the relentless march of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it will impact our lives in the very near future. The dream is that smart machines will rise to handle all the daily tasks, leaving us free to focus on truly valuable work. Consequently, these stories are diverging from the standard of driverless cars, drones and personal assistant bots like Siri, Alexa and Watson into the realm of personal financial assistants. The technology to facilitate these tasks is certainly not new, but like all innovation, it has become cheaper, faster, more ubiquitous and simply better. By combining AI bots with big data analysis, financial institutions can formulate powerful, yet personalized, advice and recommendations that promise to open up banking with equitable service levels for all, not just the high net worth clientele.